[FRIAM] singularity

[Bill Eldridge]

Carlos Gershenson wrote:
>> Crude quantitative measures are no good. For instance, the intro of OO
>> techniques can increase functionality with sometimes a decrease in the
>> number of lines of code. An example close to home for me was the
>> change from EcoLab 3 to EcoLab 4. The number of lines halved, but
>> functionality was increased maybe tenfold (**subjective measure  
>> warning**).
>>     
>
> Then maybe a measure could be the length of the manuals 
> +documentation, which reflect the functionality of a particular program?
>   
Here we're swaying between measuring bloatware and measuring 
documentation, the dreaded
Rubicon of the software programmer. Actually, automated documentation 
tools have improved.
But a package where programmers hate documenting (or document in-line), 
or are busier adding
features than doing documentation will be regarded as less progressive. 
Some software packages
realistically have less need for intricate documentation.

Also, improvements in software can be a more intuitive interface 
(decreasing needed documentation),
improved speed, improved modularity, maintainibility, integratability, 
etc. This is true of Moore's
Law as well - it's a very one-dimensional measure of computing progress. 
Many many people are
more impressed with the ability to plug in their video camera to a PC 
rather than the ability of
Excel to open 60% faster. We simply have little way to evaluate software 
progress across the board
with a measure like Moore's Law. But if we examine tasks and explore 
speed, functionality and cost
for handling tasks, we get some comparisons. Offshoring of software 
programming becomes easier because it's
easier to turn some types of software into a commodity task. Other 
field-specific tasks are much more
involved, and may become actually doable thanks to software progress, 
but still may be much slower
tasks to do than trivial already-done-a-million-times tasks. But both 
types are necessary.

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