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You will have greatly reduced the number of SLOC, but it is very unlikely that you will have reduced the number of bugs very much. I agree strongly with your p

by nkurz 9y ago

You will have greatly reduced the number of SLOC, but it is very unlikely that you will have reduced the number of bugs very much. I agree strongly with your point about potential confounders (and was about to make it myself) but now you are making your own assertion that I'm uncertain about. Why are you confident that switching to a language that greatly reduces the number of lines of code would not reduce the number of bugs? While I don't know of any hard evidence, it passes my internal plausibility test that if some of the "2 screen" functions become "1 screen" function, bugs might be less likely. There might be some counter-force that would confound this, but I wouldn't eliminate it out of hand. So what makes you say "very unlikely" rather than "not necessarily true"?

fauigerzigerk 9y ago
I simply haven't found many bugs in (mostly auto-generated) getters/setters during the past 25 years, but it's purely anecdata of course. >While I don't know of any hard evidence, it passes my internal plausibility test that if some of the "2 screen" functions become "1 screen" function, bugs might be less likely. Yes, mine too, but only for randomly chosen pieces of code. What I don't believe is that the linear correlation between SLOC and bugs that studies have found in large codebases allows us to pick and choose the lines of code that are easy to eliminate and expect the number of bugs to drop proportionately.
dllthomas 9y ago
I think the idea was "A language that is otherwise identical to Java but eliminates the need to write trivial getters and setters." This obviously reduces line count, but probably does not equivalently reduce bug count, as the removed lines are very unlikely to contain bugs.
- nkurz 9y ago
  This obviously reduces line count, but probably does not equivalently reduce bug count, as the removed lines are very unlikely to contain bugs. While I agree that the bugs are not likely to be in the trivial code, I don't think it's a given that presence of the trivial code has no impact on the number of bugs elsewhere. Consider a "fatigue" based model, where the human brain is distracted by the monotony of the bug-free getters and setters and thus unable to pay sufficient attention to the logic bugs elsewhere in the program. And again, I'm not making that claim that eliminating boilerplate reduces bugs, only objecting to the assumption that it does not.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - dllthomas 9y ago
    My intent was to clarify (what I perceived to be) the parent's argument, more than make one of my own. I think if our process is "1) write the software in Java, 2) remove those lines", it's clear that we've probably changed the average bug density of the project. I agree that there is much reason for concern in generalizing that result to what would have happened if we'd written in that other language to begin with.

by nkurz 9y ago

fauigerzigerk 9y ago

I simply haven't found many bugs in (mostly auto-generated) getters/setters during the past 25 years, but it's purely anecdata of course. >While I don't know of any hard evidence, it passes my internal plausibility test that if some of the "2 screen" functions become "1 screen" function, bugs might be less likely. Yes, mine too, but only for randomly chosen pieces of code. What I don't believe is that the linear correlation between SLOC and bugs that studies have found in large codebases allows us to pick and choose the lines of code that are easy to eliminate and expect the number of bugs to drop proportionately.

dllthomas 9y ago

I think the idea was "A language that is otherwise identical to Java but eliminates the need to write trivial getters and setters." This obviously reduces line count, but probably does not equivalently reduce bug count, as the removed lines are very unlikely to contain bugs.

nkurz 9y ago
This obviously reduces line count, but probably does not equivalently reduce bug count, as the removed lines are very unlikely to contain bugs. While I agree that the bugs are not likely to be in the trivial code, I don't think it's a given that presence of the trivial code has no impact on the number of bugs elsewhere. Consider a "fatigue" based model, where the human brain is distracted by the monotony of the bug-free getters and setters and thus unable to pay sufficient attention to the logic bugs elsewhere in the program. And again, I'm not making that claim that eliminating boilerplate reduces bugs, only objecting to the assumption that it does not.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- dllthomas 9y ago
  My intent was to clarify (what I perceived to be) the parent's argument, more than make one of my own. I think if our process is "1) write the software in Java, 2) remove those lines", it's clear that we've probably changed the average bug density of the project. I agree that there is much reason for concern in generalizing that result to what would have happened if we'd written in that other language to begin with.