A Review and Evaluation of Software Science
Ann Fitzsimmons, Tom Love · ACM Computing Surveys · 1978
During recent years, there have been many attempts to define and measure the "complexity" of a computer program.Maurme Halstead has developed a theory that gives objective measures of software complexity.Various studms and experiments have shown that the theory's predictmns of the number of bugs in programs and of the time required to implement a program are amazingly accurate.It is a promising theory worthy of much more probing scientific investigation.This paper reviews the theory, called "software science," and the evidence supporting it.A bmef description of a related theory, called "software physics," is included.