Graduate thesis on Python-related subject

[Dinu Gherman]

On Thu, 12 Apr 2001 12:13:33 +0300, Jarno J Virtanen
<jajvirta at cc.helsinki.fi> wrote:

>I'm planning to do my graduate thesis (pro gradu) for MsC on (yet
>unconfirmed and still vague) subject tightly related to Python.  In
>short, the main goal is to test hypothesis that a program (or some other
>piece of code) written in a very high level language or scripting
>language (specifically Python in my study) is 3-10 times shorter
>measured in lines of code than a program written in traditional system
>programming language (eg.  C/C++/Java, don't know yet).  I intend to
>concentrate on program length and analyse it not only by the number of
>lines but rather to specify what _is_ a line of code and so forth
>(remember, this is still just an idea :-).  Important part of the
>forthcoming research would be to study measuring overall (why, what,
>how) and to speculate on scripting languages in general.  I know that
>the main subject (measuring Python programs) would be kind of "stating
>the obvious" and I know the work done by Lutz Prechelt ("An Empirical
>Comparison of C, C++, Java, Perl, Python, Rexx, and Tcl for a
>Search/String-Processing Program") which covers also the program length,
>but my idea (besides the fact that my study would be an undergraduate
>research, so no new scientific results is required) is that hopefully
>this kind of work could be ("sort of") referenced and "the obvious"
>would be somewhere stated explicitely.  Also my intention would be to
>study (possible) special features of Python.  Now (after the short
>introduction :-), my question would be:
>
>Is there "official" (or other) interest in such study? 


Sure! Have a look at Lutz Prechelt's  interesting publication con-
trasting differences and experience of/with several languages used 
to implement a solution to the same problem under equal conditions
(in which Python was one of the examined languages):

  http://wwwipd.ira.uka.de/~prechelt/Biblio/jccpprt_computer2000.pdf

Good luck,

Dinu


-- 
Dinu C. Gherman
dinu at reportlab dot com
http://www.reportlab.com
................................................................
"The only possible values [for quality] are 'excellent' and 'in-
sanely excellent', depending on whether lives are at stake or 
not. Otherwise you don't enjoy your work, you don't work well, 
and the project goes down the drain." 
                    (Kent Beck, "Extreme Programming Explained")