| Title | Measuring source code conciseness across programming languages using compression |
| Publication Type | Conference Paper |
| Year of Publication | 2021 |
| Authors | Bergmans, Lodewijk, Schrijen, Xander, Ouwehand, Edwin, Bruntink, Magiel |
| Conference Name | 2021 IEEE 21st International Working Conference on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation (SCAM) |
| Keywords | Analytical models, benchmarked software metrics, codes, Computer languages, Conferences, Heating systems, programming language conciseness, pubcrawl, Resiliency, Scalability, software metrics, source code volume normalization, Volume measurement, work factor metrics |
| Abstract | It is well-known, and often a topic of heated debates, that programs in some programming languages are more concise than in others. This is a relevant factor when comparing or aggregating volume-impacted metrics on source code written in a combination of programming languages. In this paper, we present a model for measuring the conciseness of programming languages in a consistent, objective and evidence-based way. We present the approach, explain how it is founded on information theoretical principles, present detailed analysis steps and show the quantitative results of applying this model to a large benchmark of diverse commercial software applications. We demonstrate that our metric for language conciseness is strongly correlated with both an alternative analytical approach, and with a large scale developer survey, and show how its results can be applied to improve software metrics for multi-language applications. |
| DOI | 10.1109/SCAM52516.2021.00015 |
| Citation Key | bergmans_measuring_2021 |
Measuring source code conciseness across programming languages using compression