COCOMO - appropriate for languages like Python?

[Peter Hansen]

Jonathan Hogg wrote:
> 
> On 8/7/2002 19:42, in article
> mailman.1026153791.18801.python-list at python.org, "Skip Montanaro"
> <skip at pobox.com> wrote:
> 
> >   Andrae> Hint:  Do-not use gets()!!!
> >
> > Thanks for the elementary C security tutorial, but it really wasn't
> > necessary.  I wanted to use gets() because it was semantically the closest
> > to file objects' readline() method (read a line from sys.stdin in this
> > case).  Yes, I could have used fgets(s, 80, stdin) or something similar.
> > That wasn't the point of the post.  I was asking about COCOMO.
> 
> I thought the point was very valid. COCOMO is about fully-debugged lines of
> code. Andrae pointed out that your comparison was false because the lines of
> C code were clearly not "fully-debugged" and thus not comparable.

There's no such thing as fully debugged.  There is, however, "adequately 
debugged" (though how one gets there I'm not sure :-), and it's quite
possible that Skip's one-liner with gets() was entirely suitable for
the intended application.  It's not *always* necessary to write highly
robust code, and in that light it's quite possible the comparison is
still entirely valid.

-Peter