5 ms·

10 lines per hour? doesn't that seem painfully slow?

by abfan1127 6y ago

flavius29663 6y ago
have you ever seen MATLAB code?
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  That’s actually a pretty good argument for banning such code from the criminal justice system. The idea that unreadable code is deciding who gets locked up is really worrying.
  - deathlight 6y ago
    This thread makes me sad because when I was taught and used matlab we had strong pressures to properly comment and document our code to make it legible (if only to our own future selves). It feels almost criminal to not do that in these circumstances.
  - cozzyd 6y ago
    and depending on which MATLAB version they run it in, it might have completely different results if they haven't tested carefully...
    - willis936 6y ago
      This is not my experience. Could you share an example?
      - cozzyd 6y ago
        well, this script, for example, gave me all sorts of fits trying to run on the then-new version of MATLAB I tried it on: http://cpc.cs.qub.ac.uk/summaries/AEJS_v1_0.html http://cpc.cs.qub.ac.uk/summaries/AEJS_v1_0.html
        willis936 6y ago
        Ah okay. I thought you meant numerical changes, which would be reason to not trust a language. Mathworks has broken some legacy support in the past, but they have slowed down on that practice. They used to threaten that dll loading would go away “in a future version of MATLAB” but have since backpedaled on that. My biggest issue is writing code that leverages cool new features (especially timetables) but some people I work with never update their IDE.
techolic 6y ago
If it means what I think it means - understanding the code - sometimes it takes days to understand just one line of code. Document digging, googling, asking around, fiddling with test cases, reading production log etc.
Aachen 6y ago
It depends on the level of scrutiny. It doesn't seem unreasonable. We review a lot more code per hour (usually C-like code though) but then we're not supposed to lock someone up for murder, we just find basic things like memory corruption. Don't even need to get into the business logic to find bugs that totally break the application, let alone all of it. When writing Python (I don't have stats about reading), a 1.0 version of a small project took me 1.5 hours and consisted of 183 lines of code, so 2.2 lines per minute. That's much faster than this, but 183 lines is also a ton less complex than understanding the entirety of 180k lines and properly assessing whether it does exactly and only what it's supposed to. 10 lines per hour is probably taken as a lower bound to prove a point, especially because they argue about checking the whole thing (large parts can probably be skipped), but as a standalone statistic I would say it's probably within an order of magnitude from the true value. And for software time estimates that would be an amazing feat :p
xirbeosbwo1234 6y ago
Both 0.1 lines an hour and 1000 lines per hour would be equally wrong. That isn't how people would review that sort of code. They would test it and then thoroughly examine any areas of concern that crop up. I've run into 300-line programs that have taken me a month to figure out because the math was hard and I've run into 100,000 line programs that have taken me a few hours to tear apart.
ehwhyreally 6y ago
Yes, You also dont read programs like a book, You generally follow the methods being used, Reading line to line would be like reading a a book with all its pages re arranged.

10 lines per hour? doesn't that seem painfully slow?

flavius29663 6y ago

have you ever seen MATLAB code?

ashtonkem 6y ago
That’s actually a pretty good argument for banning such code from the criminal justice system. The idea that unreadable code is deciding who gets locked up is really worrying.
- deathlight 6y ago
  This thread makes me sad because when I was taught and used matlab we had strong pressures to properly comment and document our code to make it legible (if only to our own future selves). It feels almost criminal to not do that in these circumstances.
- cozzyd 6y ago
  and depending on which MATLAB version they run it in, it might have completely different results if they haven't tested carefully...
  - willis936 6y ago
    This is not my experience. Could you share an example?
    - cozzyd 6y ago
      well, this script, for example, gave me all sorts of fits trying to run on the then-new version of MATLAB I tried it on: http://cpc.cs.qub.ac.uk/summaries/AEJS_v1_0.html http://cpc.cs.qub.ac.uk/summaries/AEJS_v1_0.html
      - willis936 6y ago
        Ah okay. I thought you meant numerical changes, which would be reason to not trust a language. Mathworks has broken some legacy support in the past, but they have slowed down on that practice. They used to threaten that dll loading would go away “in a future version of MATLAB” but have since backpedaled on that. My biggest issue is writing code that leverages cool new features (especially timetables) but some people I work with never update their IDE.

techolic 6y ago

If it means what I think it means - understanding the code - sometimes it takes days to understand just one line of code. Document digging, googling, asking around, fiddling with test cases, reading production log etc.

Aachen 6y ago

It depends on the level of scrutiny. It doesn't seem unreasonable. We review a lot more code per hour (usually C-like code though) but then we're not supposed to lock someone up for murder, we just find basic things like memory corruption. Don't even need to get into the business logic to find bugs that totally break the application, let alone all of it. When writing Python (I don't have stats about reading), a 1.0 version of a small project took me 1.5 hours and consisted of 183 lines of code, so 2.2 lines per minute. That's much faster than this, but 183 lines is also a ton less complex than understanding the entirety of 180k lines and properly assessing whether it does exactly and only what it's supposed to. 10 lines per hour is probably taken as a lower bound to prove a point, especially because they argue about checking the whole thing (large parts can probably be skipped), but as a standalone statistic I would say it's probably within an order of magnitude from the true value. And for software time estimates that would be an amazing feat :p

xirbeosbwo1234 6y ago

Both 0.1 lines an hour and 1000 lines per hour would be equally wrong. That isn't how people would review that sort of code. They would test it and then thoroughly examine any areas of concern that crop up. I've run into 300-line programs that have taken me a month to figure out because the math was hard and I've run into 100,000 line programs that have taken me a few hours to tear apart.

ehwhyreally 6y ago

Yes, You also dont read programs like a book, You generally follow the methods being used, Reading line to line would be like reading a a book with all its pages re arranged.