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From: smosha@most.magec.com (Steve O'Shaughnessy)
Subject: Re: Please help with research
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>In article <405glu$cv6@ixnews7.ix.netcom.com>, redmtn@ix.netcom.com says...
>>
>>I'm doing comparative language research for a magazine article.
>>
>>You can help by writing a small "dump" program which opens a named file
>>and displays its data in hexadecimal and ASCII format. You can use
>>*any* language and *any* hardware platform. I need debugged code
>>however, not just an algorithm or description.

There has been a lot of *Flame* type responses to this request, but seems 
like a reasonable request to me.  Take a trivial specification, give it to a lot of 
different programmers with different backgrounds using different languages then 
compare the language used to the quality of code produced.  Or maybe he is compairing 
platforms.  Could it be he is a psychology major studying the attitudes and 
disposition of programmers using different languages?! ;-) 

There are several pitfalls to be wary of.  For example, as one poster noted, you 
really can not make a judgement of any languages not included.  The other sticking 
point is the definition of code quality.  However spelling these details out in the 
original post would taint the study.  

I would be very interested in the results.  But to believe any part of them I would 
have to know the details of the study.  I never take statistics at face value.  Just 
because this type of study may have been done before is no reason not to repeat it.  
Again we don't know his criteria nor do we need to know, yet.

Steve O
smosha@most.magec.com

