Software complexity, program synthesis, and data flow analysis (session overview)
James M. Bieman · 1985
The papers in this session address three different themes - software complexity measurement, program synthesis, and data flow analysis. Research results in each area should have significant impact in the software industry.Kearney, et al's paper describes the difficult problems that must be solved by software complexity measurement research. Researchers in this area are looking for the structural properties of software that make programs difficult to understand and debug. Much software measures research has been plagued with theoretical and methodological problems which the paper describes. Because software complexity measurement research results promise to benefit the software industry through lower development and maintenance costs, the software industry is often too ready to apply measures that are still of questionable value. As the paper points out, users of complexity measures should be aware of the current limitations.