On 21.09.2017 03:32, Nick Coghlan wrote:
On 21 September 2017 at 10:51, Ned Batchelder ned@nedbatchelder.com wrote:
Write a document that proposes some quality metrics. Share it around. Get
people to like it. If it becomes popular, then people will start to value it
as a standard for project quality.
And explore the academic literature for research on quality measures
that are actually predictors of real world benefits (e.g. readability,
maintainability, correctness, affordability).
There doesn't seem to be all that much research out there, although I
did find https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-12165-4_24
from several years ago, as well as
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7809284/ from last year (both are
examples of pay-to-play science though, so not particularly useful to
open source practitioners).
On the topic, you might want to have a look at a talk I held
at EuroPython 2016 on valuation of a code base (in the context
of valuation of a Python company):
https://downloads.egenix.com/python/EuroPython-2016-Python-Startup-Valuation...
(1596930 bytes)
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIoE3KJxK6U
There are a few things you can do with metrics to figure out how
good a code base is. Of course, in the end you always have to
do a code review, but the metrics are a good indicator of where
to start looking for possible issues.
--
Marc-Andre Lemburg
eGenix.com
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> Regardless, Ned's point still stands: the PEP process only applies to
> situations where the CPython core developers (or a closely associated
> group like the Python Packaging Authority) are the relevant global
> authorities on a topic. Even PEP 7 and PEP 8 are technically only the
> style guides for the CPython reference implementation - folks just
> borrow them as the baseline style guides for their own Python
> projects.
>
> "Which characteristics of Python code are useful predictors of the
> ability to deliver software projects to specification on time and
> within budget?" (the most pragmatic definition of "software quality")
> is *not* one of those areas - for that, you'd be more looking towards
> groups like IEEE (Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers) and
> ACM (Association for Computing Machinery), who study that kind of
> thing across multiple languages and language communities, and try to
> put some empirical weight behind their findings, rather than relying
> primarily on instinct and experience (which is the way we tend to do
> things in the open source community, since it's more fun, and less
> effort).
>
> Cheers,
> Nick.
>
--
Marc-Andre Lemburg
eGenix.com
Professional Python Services directly from the Experts (#1, Sep 21 2017)
>>> Python Projects, Coaching and Consulting ...
http://www.egenix.com/
>>> Python Database Interfaces ...
http://products.egenix.com/
>>> Plone/Zope Database Interfaces ...
http://zope.egenix.com/
________________________________________________________________________
::: We implement business ideas - efficiently in both time and costs :::
eGenix.com Software, Skills and Services GmbH Pastor-Loeh-Str.48
D-40764 Langenfeld, Germany. CEO Dipl.-Math. Marc-Andre Lemburg
Registered at Amtsgericht Duesseldorf: HRB 46611
http://www.egenix.com/company/contact/
http://www.malemburg.com/
