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From: lgm@polaris.ih.att.com (Lawrence G. Mayka)
Subject: Re: Reference Counting (was Searching Method for Incremental Garbage Collection)
In-Reply-To: ark@research.att.com's message of Sun, 4 Dec 1994 16:06:50 GMT
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	<19941203T221402Z.enag@naggum.no> <D0AnFE.MII@research.att.com>
Date: Mon, 5 Dec 1994 13:55:53 GMT
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Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.lang.c:119288 comp.lang.c++:101670 comp.lang.lisp:15922

In article <D0AnFE.MII@research.att.com> ark@research.att.com (Andrew Koenig) writes:

   In article <19941203T221402Z.enag@naggum.no> Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no> writes:

   > I have yet to see comparisons of productivity between a CASE/C++ programmer
   > vs a LISP programmer, but they claim five times increase in productivity,
   > and that's mostly from the dropping number of bugs, for the CASE/C++ combo,
   > and ten times increase in productivity with LISP.  such figures are
   > probably way too round to be accurate, but if there's truth to them, you'd
   > still be way ahead with a real programming language compared to a crippled
   > language, however good the crutches.

   The closest thing I've seen to a believable study was by Howard Trickey,
   who implemented a fairly substantial program (O(10K lines)) in Lisp and
   C++ simultaneously and took notes.  His conclusion was that in that
   particular context, choice of language didn't affect his productivity much.

   Yes, it's only one data point and yes one can find all kinds of flaws
   in the methodology, but I haven't seen any evidence that isn't at least as flawed.

I am obliged to point out that, given AT&T's very close past and
present relationship with C++ and strong private and public commitment
to it, any refutation of Mr. Trickey's ancient memorandum and
Mr. Koenig's comments above, including any contrary evidence, would
very likely be stamped AT&T Proprietary--Not for Public Disclosure.
AT&T employees cannot be considered unbiased, unconstrained
participants in discussions of this kind.  I can only suggest that
readers learn CLOS and C++ for themselves, try both languages on
appropriate and significant applications, making use of development
environments appropriate to each, and then come to their own
conclusions.

If this thread is to continue at all, I suggest that it not be
cross-posted to widely disparate newsgroups.
--
        Lawrence G. Mayka
        AT&T Bell Laboratories
        lgm@ieain.att.com

Standard disclaimer.
