At 07:36 AM 12/30/98 -0800, Robert C. Leif, Ph.D. wrote: > Congress should require that DoD and other Government agencies analyze the > results of their previous software practices and create a database for > monitoring throughout their lifecycle all future software projects. Good idea. I have an on-line copy of "Department of Defense Guide for Managing Information Technology (IT)as an Investment and Measuring Performance" getting projects to follow it is another matter. You might also look at the Software Program Managers Network (http://www.spmn.com). The control panel there is a very interesting idea, and it's time may have come. The little books are wonderful for dropping on the desks of project managers that just don't get it. ;-) > I like your data. However, it is still anecdotal. It is possible to do a > cross-over study. However, as we agree, it can not be blind. Unfortunately, MITRE is in a special situation here. MITRE, on behalf of the DoD has access to lots of real data, but with very stiff restrictions on sharing that data with ANYONE. So while I can share data collected before I came to MITRE, and there is some data that MITRE has published with the permission of the government (mostly by Victor Basili and others relating to NASA work for a center now part of the University of Maryland), a lot of good data you want sits on shelves gathering dust. However, good data is out there for the taking from other sources. For example, the Ada Europe conference in 1990 had several good papers on exactly this subject. (Proceedings published as Ada: Experiences and prospects by the Cambridge University Press.) To quote from one article there (An Ada Case Study in Cellular Telephony Testing Tools by Harr Doscher of Motorola): As can be seen from Figure 5, the M5000 has had 96% fewer post ship date defects reported than the C effort....productivity on the M5000, measured in lines of code generated per day normalized to lines of assembly language, was roughly twice that of projects done in C. So again to sum up, you should expect some productivity gains from using Ada 83 during development, but the startling results come after the software is delivered. Ada 95 provides much more productivity, and we haven't seen any signs of quality decreases, but that may be due to programmers not yet using all the new (to Ada) features of Ada 95. Why expect decreases in quality? Because in every--anecdotal, agreed--case I know of where people tried to use a binding to an existing class library in other than small projects, they have complained of quality problems, not just with the library, and switched to a less OO approach. I am hoping to do a small study next year on what an Ada class library should look like to avoid these problems. Robert I. Eachus with Standard_Disclaimer; use Standard_Disclaimer; function Message (Text: in Clever_Ideas) return Better_Ideas is...