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I like cyclomatic complexity, and Kolmogorov complexity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclomatic_complexity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclomatic_complexit
by mejutoco 4y ago
I like cyclomatic complexity, and Kolmogorov complexity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclomatic_complexity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclomatic_complexity
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov_complexity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov_complexity
- tialaramex 4y agoI guess technically Kolmogorov complexity is an answer to their question since they said "describe" but I expect Waterluvian was thinking "measure" and you can't really measure Kolmogorov complexity for real programs. It is mostly useful for proofs or thought experiments. You can try to measure Cyclomatic complexity, so that's more useful in practice.
- Aeolun 4y agoIf only someone posts tomorrow with somethhing similar to cyclomatic complexity.
- TheRealPomax 4y agoKolmogorov complexity is borderline useless if the idea is to describe code size or code complexity for humans, though. It only describes programs in terms of "what is the smallest (fully qualified) program that would generate something that ultimately leads to the original result", completely removing both the human, as well as the original code in question, from the equation. And to make matters worse, we don't actually know how to calculate the true Kolmogorov complexity of anything because humans are notoriously bad at figuring out what "the smallest program" actually is, so it's a great device for reasoning about complexity, but it's a near useless device for determining actual complexity.
- mejutoco 4y agoI agree with you and tialaramex above, and I was hesitating including it for this reason, but I think it is very useful as a thought experiment. I find it a very elegant concept about complexity (even if not very practical), and wanted to share it regardless to be honest ;)