Newsgroups: alt.lang.design,comp.lang.c++,comp.lang.lisp
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From: tob@world.std.com (Tom O Breton)
Subject: Re: Comparing productivity: LisP against C++
Message-ID: <D18H22.2vt@world.std.com>
Reply-To: tob@world.std.com
Organization: BREnterprises
Date: Thu, 22 Dec 1994 22:27:38 GMT
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One thing this thread has roundly demonstrated is that it is not easy to
compare productivity, particularly since people can interpret the same
requirements in widely different ways.

The first guy wrote a program that checked for several errors and
allowed different image sizes to be handled by simply changing height &
width. No _wonder_ that took longer! IMO that is entirely due to the
more ambitious approach, which swamps any differences due to language.

What _is_ important to me is not how fast one can bang out trivial code,
but how easily one can refine existing code.

IE, it may take me a few extra seconds to type

        int
        main( int argc, char** argv )

but the effect of that on my productivity is negligible. However, if
(say) changing a variable takes me 30 seconds to find every instance
(with editor help) and 30 seconds to recompile, that _does_ have a
significant effect on productivity.

Another important issue is how easy it is to provide the
"non-functional" stuff: safety and efficiency. For instance, now that
C++ has exception handling the first program need not have written out
all those checks against NULL and presumably would thereby have been
written about as fast as the others.

        Tom

-- 
tob@world.std.com
TomBreton@delphi.com: Author of The Burning Tower

