A Quantitative Analysis of a Software Development in Ada,
Abstract
The Department of Defense has spent a considerable amount of money and resources on the development of the new programming language Ada. To develop a better understanding of the nature of this language, it is necessary to pull it out of the research arena and use it in an industrial environment where one must deal with issues such as training, budgets and support facilities. To gain insight into the use of this new language, the University of Maryland and General Electric have jointly undertaken a study of the development of a software project written in Ada. A set of goals and questions was established at the beginning of the project. These include generic goals for any software development project, goals relating to Ada as a design and implementation language, and goals relating to metrics for the Ada Programming Support Environment (APSE). Data collected from the project were analyzed. This paper describes the observations which provide answers to a subset of the goals and questions. While some of the answers are relevant only to our particular environment, others apply to any group wishing to use Ada for the first time, and still others apply to any Ada environment. More specifically, this paper addresses those goals that are related to effort, changes, errors and programmer characteristics.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- May 01, 1984
- Accession Number
- ADA165337
Entities
People
- Chang Shih
- Connie L. Ramsey
- Elizabeth E. Katz
- Nora M. Panlilio-yap
- Victor Basili
Organizations
- University of Maryland