On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 2:40 AM, Robert K.
[email protected]wrote:
Interesting tidbit: research has shown that developers have roughly
the same productivity in lines of code per day independently of
programming language. From that automatically follows that with more
preproduced code at your hands (either in libraries, interpreters or
compilers) your overall performance increases.
Though you take a hit learning how to use the preproduced code. I have
spent
a lot of time failing to learn libraries and conventions.
On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 3:40 AM, lkfken [email protected] wrote:
Interesting tidbit: research has shown that developers have roughly
the same productivity in lines of code per day independently of
programming language. From that automatically follows that with more
preproduced code at your hands (either in libraries, interpreters or
compilers) your overall performance increases.
Thank you.
My English is not very good. So from what I understand, you are
saying that productivity has not direct relationship to the
programming language?
IIRC the statement was that independent from programming language the
number produced lines of code per day that were error free is roughly
identical. So this was not only about the writing itself but also
about ensuring quality.
Based from your comment, I did a little research.
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2005/08/are-all-programming-languages-the-same.html
Will you please point me to the source of your comment?
Unfortunately I don’t have a URL handy. Candidate sources are
http://www.amazon.com/dp/3540520392
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0201835959
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0932633439
But the source may be a totally different one. It’s been a while that
I found that bit.
Anyhow, I was not talking about productivity. I was trying to say
measuring the web framework in “number of lines” in 2 different
languages is almost pointless…esp. when it is used as a reference on
performance.
And I absolutely agreed (and agree). I was digression because I found
that bit interesting and thought others would, too.
I am not sure this analysis is correct: typically, if you have a
library with a good implementation efforts have gone into it to
provide a good interface and to optimize it.
You are right. I love libraries/OOP… I cannot imagine if I have to
write EVERY routines myself in order for my script to work.
Exactly. And that does not only save you writing effort but testing
effort (and probably documentation effort) as well.
But what if it is an mission-critical scenario? First, I prob.
shouldn’t use Ruby to begin with.
And you would base that decision on what?
Second, if I have to use Ruby, in
order to gain back few extra cycles, I might need to write my own
extension in C instead of using “standard libraries”.
I am already way off the original topic. Sorry.
Drifting off topic can reveal interesting insights and produce
discussions which lead to new knowledge. 
Kind regards
robert
On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 11:40:20AM +0900, lkfken wrote:
My English is not very good. So from what I understand, you are
saying that productivity has not direct relationship to the
programming language?
I suppose that, if you are going to produce the same number of lines of
code in either of two languages, and all else is equal, the more
expressive language – that is, the language that allows you to express
more in the same number of lines of code – will “make” you “more
productive”. This is because the following two things could happen, and
which happens depends on the language:
Language A – You write 40 lines of code per day for three days. You
finish your program, because for every 20 lines of code you achieve one
complete feature in your program, and it needs six features to be
finished.
Language B – You write 40 lines of code per day for six days. You
finish your program, because for every 40 lines of code you achieve one
complete feature in your program, and it needs six features to be
finished.
In this case, if all else is equal, Language A would be your best bet.
Then again, “all else” is pretty much ever equal.