A software science analysis of programming size
Charles P. Smith · 1980
Programming Development at IBM's Santa Teresa Laboratory has been investigating “The Elements of Software Science” as defined by Maurice H. Halstead.1,2 This report summarizes the findings after several large IBM products have been counted and analyzed. Program vocabulary, length, volume and lines of code are discussed and compared. It is shown that the size of a program can be estimated with reasonable accuracy once the vocabulary is known.