Re: Maintenance cost - promoting BB & CP

From: [at]} <Bob>
Date: Sat, 28 Feb 2004 12:36:47 +0000

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Hi René,

> Now, he does not want only WORDS, he wants PROOF. Are you aware of any
> research, study or statistics telling anything about complexity,
> language used, documentation, development cost and maintenance cost?

I often see the claim that 70% of the lifetime costs of a software
product are absorbed by maintenance. Maintenance can be split into bug
fixes and enhancements, with plenty of grey area for arguing about
which is which.

Boehm's "Software Engineering Economics" is one of the best known texts
on the subject. It was first published in 1981 though, so I don't know
if the results still hold.

Parnas considers language to be more or less irrelevant:
http://www-inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~maratb/readings/parnas-jewels.pdf
instead he suggests we should concentrate on design, documentation, separation
of concerns and good interfaces. You might find his references
useful. Personally I think a language that supports & encourages these
principles, and discourages the sort of thing we see in many VB
programs, is very important. However, it is certainly possible to
write good systems in bad languages if the system design is good, and
it is conversely possible to write bad systems in good languages.

I have found this using Google:
http://www.adaic.com/whyada/ada-vs-c/cada_art.html

It compares Ada and C, and concludes that Ada is cheaper, but that the
language of choice is only one of several important factors. It can
give you some idea of the scope for cost savings (or losses) that the
choice of language can have.

Remember that the development cost is not the only cost. If you
develop something in CP that has to last 10-15 years, then somebody
will need to find and pay for CP programmers for that length of time.
There are cost benefits in choosing an imperfect language that has a
large population of cheaper programmers to choose from.

-- 
Regards,
 Bob
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Received on Sat Feb 28 2004 - 13:36:47 UTC