Re: Threats to the Singularity.

From: James Rogers (jamesr@best.com)
Date: Thu Jun 13 2002 - 23:51:27 MDT


On 6/13/02 7:06 PM, "Samantha Atkins" <samantha@objectent.com> wrote:
>
> What on earth is all this LOC talk about? I haven't seen the
> like since we used to brag about getting tiny Basic in less than
> 2K bytes of machine code.

I think most everyone here is aware that actual LoC does not provide much
value as a measure of specific capability and performance, but to an
experienced software developer it does convey a fairly good idea of the
complexity. When someone asks "how hard would it be to do x", it is
frequently meaningful to give an estimate in theoretical LoC in a standard
language -- this doesn't necessarily reflect how many LoC it will take a
particular person to implement it or how much time it would actually take to
deliver it in the implementation language. In a sense, you are properly
estimating the algorithmic complexity of the proposed problem. The reason
you would use LoC is that is a well-understood unit of measure for
algorithmic complexity when used in the abstract, or at least I can't think
of a better one off the top of my head. This is very different than using
LoC as a measure of development progress or individual performance, which is
absurd (as you implied).

-James Rogers
 jamesr@best.com



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