comment on

So why is the research that Steve McConnell found so at odds with our direct experience?

You've hit on a form of sample-related bias that research to determine "optimal" often falls prey to. The bias enters by way of an unstated assumption that the population that the sample is drawn from won't shift or change its nature.

The studies McConnell cites were done while object-oriented approaches where still taking hold. Their "sample" was procedural code written in the language of the day. At best, that was C, and I'll bet it included a lot of Fortran and COBOL. But in the following two decades, the "population" shifted. Were those studies to be done again today, I'll bet they would come up with very different answers about what "optimal" is. And if you were to do the studies again in 20 years, the answers might be different again.

In reply to Re: Short routines matter more in OO? by dws
in thread Short routines matter more in OO? by tilly

Are you posting in the right place? Check out Where do I post X? to know for sure.
Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags. Currently these include the following:
<code> <a> <b> <big> <blockquote> <br /> <dd> <dl> <dt> <em> <font> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <hr /> <i> <li> <nbsp> <ol> <p> <small> <strike> <strong> <sub> <sup> <table> <td> <th> <tr> <tt> <u> <ul>
Snippets of code should be wrapped in <code> tags not <pre> tags. In fact, <pre> tags should generally be avoided. If they must be used, extreme care should be taken to ensure that their contents do not have long lines (<70 chars), in order to prevent horizontal scrolling (and possible janitor intervention).
Want more info? How to link or How to display code and escape characters are good places to start.


Come for the quick hacks, stay for the epiphanies.
	PerlMonks