comment on

Shorter is always better how?

Less error prone? Five studies cited by McConnel found that routine size was either inversely correlated with error frequency, or not correlated at all [1,2,3,4,5]

Easier to understood? A study of upper level comp. sci. students found that comprehension of a super-modularized program into routines about 10 lines long was no better than their comprehension of a program with no routines (but when moderate length routines were used, comprehension scores rose 65%). [6]

Less changes required? Another study finds that code needs to be changed least when routines average 100 - 150 lines. [7]

So, on the one hand we have several empirical studies which find that shorter routines do not require less changes, are not easier to understand, and are not less error prone. All of that relates to software cost in the real world. On the other hand, we have your unsupported opinion.

[1] Basili & Perricone (1984) "Software Errors and Complexity: An Empi
+rical
    Investigation."  Communications of the ACM 27, no. 1 (Jan) 42-52.

[2] Shen et al (1985) "Identifying Error-Prone Software --- An Emprici
+al
    Study"  IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering SE-11 (Apr) 317-
+324

[3] Card, Church, & Agresti (1986) "An Empirical Study of Software Des
+ign
    Practices"  IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering SE-12 no 2 (
+Feb)
    264-271

[4] Card & Glass (1990) "Measuring Software Design Quality". Englewood
    CLiffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall

[5] Shelby & Basili (1991) "Analyzing Error-Prone System STructure"  I
+EE
    Transactions on Software Engineering SE-17 no 2 (Feb) 141-152

[6] Conte, Dunsmore, Shen (1986) "Software Engineering Metrics and Mod
+els"
    Menlo Park, Calif: Benjamin/Cummings

[7] Lind & Vairavan (1989) "An Experimental Investigation of Software
    Metrics and Their Relationship to Software Development Effort" IEE
+E
    Transactions on Software Engineering SE-15 no 5 (May) 649-653
[download]

In reply to Re: Re: Short routines matter more in OO? by Anonymous Monk
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.


good chemistry is complicated, and a little bit messy -LW
	PerlMonks