Reminds me of a story I heard about IBM and Microsoft when they were co-operating on the development of OS/2 - IBM coders' productivity was measured by LoC, Microsoft coders were measured by Function Point (or some such measure). The IBMers were pissed off because Microsoft often rewrote the IBM code to reduce the number of instructions executed - IBMers productivity crashed.
BTW, I had a manager at that time who insisted I rewrote a whole lot of IBM 360 Assembler in COBOL, because it would have fewer lines of code and so execute faster.
Posted by blowback at June 8, 2008 12:45 PMThe only reason print journalism will be around in ten years is the coupons.
Posted by dj moonbat at June 8, 2008 01:14 PMOH MY GOD - LONGER MODO! SHOOT ME NOW!
hahah. Kidding. I dont read her.
Posted by the young Judith at June 8, 2008 01:16 PMblowback, I get a kick out of your boss assuming that because you had rewritten your program in COBOL and it had less LoC then assembler, that it would have run faster. Perhaps there would be less bugs because of the code generator, but to run faster would be some trick - unless the author of the code generator had some mean tricks. And that's not that likely.
BTW: here's an article explaining Function Points.
Posted by Mary at June 8, 2008 08:00 PMJeez. The LAT used to be a pretty good paper. Now it's on its way to becoming a tabloid. I'm glad I don't live there any longer.
Posted by Delia at June 9, 2008 10:41 AM