Portable .NET Reaches A Quarter Million Lines 303
Pnet Guy writes: "Portable .NET is a component of the dotGNU meta project to provide a CLI (ECMA standard) platform for free software. The project true to its name runs on a variety of platform including Linux,Hurd and Cygwin GNU systems. To avoid any legal problems Pnet has decided to go the hard way and bootstrap our compiler off gcc. Unlike Mono which uses microsoft's runtime to run their compiler. Our premier developer Rhys Weatherly has contributed 254,423 lines written since Jan 1, 2001. Which amounts to about 5000 lines per week which is phenomenal for any programmer. He is dotGNU's one-man army. So join him in celebrating his quarter billion lines of his code." Update: 12/27 02:41 GMT by T : Note that as many readers have pointed out, that's just like the headline says -- a quarter million lines, rather than billion.
Some related links to check out include the
dotGNU home page,
the Southern Storm Software (Rhys Weatherley's shop, with Portable .NET information),
Mono's page and Pnet's CVS repository.
okay (Score:2, Redundant)
Re:okay (Score:1, Interesting)
Not to mention that anyone who thinks that writing an open implementation of
Why not spend your time improving the threading implementation on Linux, for one thing? Java on Linux is one thing that has a chance in hell of defeating the Microsoft juggernaut. Ever done thread programming in C or C++? It sucks ass -- try it in Java and you'll see how clean a language *can* be if you think it out. Sure, Java's got some problems -- GUIs for one thing are a tad slow (though not bad on fast machines), but on the server, Java is king.
Look at what
Anyway, this whole thing seems like a colossal waste of time to me.
see ya,
-nate
simicolons? (Score:2)
Exactly.... I can write 250,000 simicolons pretty fast, too.
Simicolons?
Are those supposed to be binary semicolons, the same way that "mebibytes" are supposed to be binary megabytes?
(Couldn't resist...)
Re:okay (Score:1)
...and it's Southern Storm Software [southern-storm.com.au], not Sourther Storm, at least judging by the URL as the site is Slashdotted.
Re:Billions and Billions (Score:2)
I can assure you that Win2K kernel is much smaller than Linux's kernel.
For a start, it's Linux who uses the monolithic design, while Win2K uses a modified micro-kernel design.
When MS talks about Win2K being 35MLOC, they are talking about the whole thing. And this contain so many things beside a kernel that I can't begin to count.
But please tell me, what is the sum in KLOC of the following products?
Linux kernel
KDE
KDE-Parts (equilent to Windows' COM, does it support language and location trasperancy? If no, add CORBA, which does)
Mozilla
Apache
perl & python
J2EE implementation
Basic applications (text editor, word processor, image editor, etc)
Networking stack
Printing services
And the list goes on...
Who to count lines of code? (Score:1)
And to extend the code you don't reuse it?
How can we measure codes lines written?
But how many are comments? (Score:2, Interesting)
I once wrote a 'small' 150k line util. Before I left the company, I was asked to comment it, after decent amounts (ie, more than '// perform the calculation') of comments, the line count was around 230k.
So how many of the quarter million are comments then ?
Re:But how many are comments? (Score:5, Insightful)
" Well commented code can end up with quite a high percentage of the code base as commments.
I once wrote a 'small' 150k line util. Before I left the company, I was asked to comment it, after decent amounts (ie, more than '// perform the calculation') of comments, the line count was around 230k.
So how many of the quarter million are comments then ?"
You seem to be implying that in order to determine if the code is good, and represents a lot of work, you need to know the comment to statement ratio, which is true. However, you also seem to be implying that if there are lots of comments then there is less 'actual code'... and that it therefore represents less 'actual work'
If there is a high degree of commenting this is both good, and represents lots of work on the part of the programmer, assuming of course that the comments are good, accurate, and add value to the product in terms of maintainability.
One of the main reason why the Linux kernel is robust code, but remains an example of extremely bad Software Engineering is that it is poorly commented, when at all.
Remember this fundamental maxim of good Software Engineering practice:
Good source code is compileable documentation" - Zero__Kelvin
It can compile, run robustly, and be very 'un-buggy', but that doesn't make it good source code. Until programmers really grasp this they will never become competant Software Engineers! Those who question this wisdom may want to start educating themselves with a thorough and open-minded reading of Fredrick Brooks' "The Mythical Man Month" [amazon.com].
Bah! (Score:3, Informative)
At the core of Microsoft's
This is simply not true! Hailstorm is only a service that happens to use the
Andre060
Hmmm (Score:3, Interesting)
I didn't read the article, so maybe there are more specifics. But um, so what? Are these quality lines of code? Comments? Have they been peer reviewed? Regression tested (you did write test cases before hand, right)? I mean almost any programmer can crank out 5000 lines of crap a week, big deal. If he's producing quality, reasonably bug free code, in this amount, good for him. Otherwise, I'm not so sure I'd be touting this is a big achievement. With one person writing the code, you're only getting one persons views, etc. They're aren't any sanity checks during design decisions or even better, another way of looking at the problem. That's a bad thing in my opinion.
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
-jeff
Re:Hmmm (Score:1)
Wow, what an incredibly scathing comment. Have you ever been part of a good team effort? Sounds like you have had some bad experienecs. By the way, I completely disagree. I don't think groups always dumb down, thats a function of group/project management in my opinion. I've been on several projects as a consultant where I went to the team lead and said "Bob and Susan are pretty good developers, but I don't think they're cut out for this type of project. Their code is always late and poorly documented, but it does work." I had them rotated onto another project and got some developers who could keep up with the pace.
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Interesting)
The reality is that you CAN make use of mediocre programmers too, but you need to be careful.
The gifted programmer can take the lead of any coding that goes on and write the core components. That gifted programmer should also design the layout of the code and properly set up the abstraction of appropriate components. The mediocre programmers can then be assigned some of the easier programming tasks, while the gifted programmer resumes efforts on the more difficult ones.
You'll never get away from having programmers of different skill levels working together. But - every project should have at least one gifted programmer to lead the way. The rest of the programmers can still be useful, and can catch each other's mistakes. They might even catch a mistake in the gifted programmer's code the odd time. When you're coding in a rush, mistakes happen.
The same person looking at the same code over and over again will get used to seeing that code and sometimes silly mistakes might take a while to uncover, because after time it starts to 'look right'. No matter how gifted a programmer is, mistakes happen. It's how efficiently you can find and correct them that counts.
Primadonnas (Score:2, Insightful)
1. You become *way* to dependent on the primadonna.
2. You don't get near full benefit of the rest of the team.
3. You will get a high staff turn-over because noone can tolerate a primadonna in the long run.
If you have a small to medium sized team (\10 developers) processes like XP will keep your developers producing quality code fast and happy at the same time.
Re:Primadonnas (Score:2)
All I'm saying is that it's logical that different people have different abilities, and the gifted ones need to take the lead and make certain that the code has good design.
Yes, it's stupid to have full dependency on the 'primadonna', as you put it. But, without good leadership, your codebase will become a mess very quickly. Proper design will eliminate redundancy in code and will make debugging much easier. Many programmers do not understand how to begin designing a large system. This isn't work that can be done by one and only one person - a group of 'core' developers is best, and will oversee the work of the whole.
Once the design is more-or-less defined, everyone can go to work. The gifted programmer is less needed now.
Having a 'primadonna' is unacceptable for long-term stability of a project. It is the opposite side of my previous argument, where NOT having a gifted programmer take leadership of a project in its initial stages will kill the project in the long term.
In my work situation, this design work is actually a partnership of TWO people. Neither are 'primadonna', and neither are so indispensible that having them leave would kill the project. But it is recognized that they understand the 'big picture' better than the less talented (or less experienced) programmers do.
Let's face it - Linux and most large-scale projects evolve under a 'leadership' of the most talented and programmers. They are the ones responsible for designing the layout of the code, and how (more or less) the whole picture will work. At least, more so in the beginning than now. Inevitably, though, you have the people at the top of your 'programmer pyramid' who decide which code to commit or not. Not one person, but not the whole mass either. You can write anything you want to plug into the kernel, but the kernel design was NOT defined by you (you meaning most people).
Re:Primadonnas (Score:2)
Then again, this guy has done 38 man-years of work in one year.
Re:Hmmm (Score:2)
Agreed (Score:2)
If this code is produced in a rush and hasn't been thought out properly (and if you're alone working at this kind of pace this probably is the case), then I'm afraid to see what this code looks like.
I'm willing to bet that this is the case to some degree, because with only one person working on it there is no peer review to catch this sort of thing, and the emphasis will always be to get the program to 'just work', not to keep the code clean.
I know when I'm the only person working on something it takes a *lot* of discipline to keep the code clean and maintainable. In the back of your mind you figure that since you'll be maintaining it, it doesn't matter how it looks. Well... looking at your code in 6 months, you'll have no idea why you did things that way and why it works. Hopefully the code is at least commented to give him a clue.
Re:Agreed (Score:2)
This might be in purpose, you know, to save you the time you spend pack & unpacking the variables from the stack
Re:Hmmm (Score:2)
I can deal with poorly written code, but not with big gaping security holes because people were slinging out code as fast as humanely possible.
On the other hand, I have met a number of people that could write 5000 lines of efficent, secure code in a week. Hopefully, Mr. One Man Army is one of those people.
Re:Hmmm (Score:2, Informative)
There should exist the same kind of tools for C/C++. Maybe if you measure this code against one of them, you could get a better picture of code's quality.
LOC (lines of code) alone don't reflect ANYTHING.
Re:Hmmm (Score:2)
Actually, no, any programmer can't. Seriously. Most programmers simply can't conceive the number of coherent, interrelated thoughts necessary to produce 5000 lines/week of reasonably functional code. Even without knowing anything about the quality of this code, the sheer quantity bespeaks an extraordinary programmer.
Re:Hmmm (Score:2)
Besides, it would be good if some of that code was actually being reused and refitted from older progs. Thus, you could do 1000 lines of code in an afternoon.
5000 lines of code per week, counting 60 hours (being generous), is 83 lines per hour, or 1.4 lines per minutes. assuming 40 bytes per line (including the spaces (no tabs--of course)) that's 55 bytes per minutes. Assuming 7 bytes per word, that's 8 words per minutes.
I'm assuming that the aveerage programmer can manage to type that fast.
The reality is that the programmer needs to be highly skilled, highly motivated, and have a very good understanding of what he/she is trying to achieve.
But it is possible. Also, the programmer may need to be single and independently wealthy (living at parent's or have exercised interesting stock options in the summer of 2000)
Re:Hmmm (Score:2)
Typing isn't programming. Just so you know.
Re:Hmmm (Score:2)
Re:Hmmm (Score:2)
How buggy is it? (Score:2, Flamebait)
How bad could one man's code be?
How maintainable?
Re:How buggy is it? (Score:2)
Re:How buggy is it? (Score:2)
we are porting alot of legacy stuff over.
Re:How buggy is it? (Score:2)
Why bother .NET? (Score:1, Troll)
Why not use resources to create better Java sollutions or C++ sollutions instead?
Re:Why bother .NET? (Score:2)
Do we really need C++ (or ) why not create better Cobol sollutions instead?
Re:Why bother .NET? (Score:1)
Oh and Kenny's dead too.
Re:Why bother .NET? (Score:2)
But. This is a completely different situation from C vs. Cobol, or C++ vs. C, or Java vs. C++, or whatever. This is about people buying into a closed, proprietary application framework put out by a viciously monopolistic company with a history of creating terrible software, when those same people have talents which could be put to work making open-source software which is already quite good even better. Imagine what a dreary place the world would be today if Linus (or maybe a better comparison is the original BSD team) had decided to drop this whole free-Unix-clone idea in favor of making clones of MS-DOS.
Re:Why bother .NET? (Score:2)
And not to rain on the parade too much but all your closed, proprietary, statements could also be stated by the Java holders Sun.
Imagine what a pain it would be if the Samba developers had decided to not make clones of windows file sharing utility, and everyone had to run PC-NFS.
Re:Why bother .NET? (Score:2)
Re:Why bother .NET? (Score:2, Insightful)
Remember, these are all ECMA standards now; it's not like
Re: (Score:2)
.NET (Score:4, Funny)
half a million lines of code... (Score:5, Funny)
quarter billion eh? (Score:1)
Re:quarter billion eh? (Score:2)
1 Metric Billion (or US Trillion):
- 10^12 - a million million
1 American Billion:
- 10^9 or a thousand million in English.
1 Metric Trillion: - 10^18 - a million billion
God this is confusing...
Depends on point of view (Score:5, Funny)
int
main
(
argv
,
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argc
[
]
)
{
printf
(
"
test
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return
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what you get there is 3 lines of code, but you get paid or in this case credited for 23. Now if you got paid (or for that mater recieved recognition) by the line, which would you right??
Re:Depends on point of view (Score:3, Informative)
Commendations (Score:3, Insightful)
- Snowbeam
But this is good! (Score:2)
It will make the ever so elegant C# language portable, which I'm really looking forward to as I never fell in love with Java as a language.
Furthermore, at least in the Microsoft IT world, C# is it. If you're not learning C#, you're so much refuse in the new paradigm. Giving the burgeoning C# pool of programmers portability options will definitely help keep Microsoft in their place.
Oh, and keep your eye on the likes of IBM and Sun: Odds are good that they'll support an independent implementation of
Baloney... (Score:3, Informative)
Now that aside... you used one language feature as an example to promote Java's superiority. ONE feature! Look at http://www.25hoursaday.com/CsharpVsJava.html for a more complete comparison. There's about 20 features in C# that Java doesn't have, so is C# immediately superior because of that? Maybe so, maybe not but I won't be making that decision based on ONE language feature.
Now all *that* aside: Use the right tool for the job. I assert that C# and Java will be used for essentially different types of jobs for the immediate future. Sun/IBM did indeed get a jump on Microsoft with Java, but that won't mean much over the long haul.
Last point: Have the proverbial balls to post as something other than AC when you decide to flame. If you'd thought your opinion was worth sh*t, you might have taken the effort to express yourself more effectively; as it was you did it half-assed, and it shows.
True (Score:2)
As far as my real opinion on Java vs. C#: I don't even care. I'll let other people obsess over that; and I'll eat their lunch while they're doing it.
Anyway, none of this really matters. My original and most important point was that having a non-MS implementation of
Quarter Billion? (Score:1, Insightful)
Now the last time I checked, 250,000 was a quarter million, not a quarter billion
How long until Microsoft hires him (Score:1)
Remember the guy who ported Sun's Java code to Linux?
He was hired by Microsoft and was never heard from again.
Hopefully this won't happen again.
NIST to rename "millions" unit to "mebibillions" (Score:5, Funny)
In a press release issued earlier today, the National Institute of Standards and Technology [nist.gov] has announced that they will be renaming the term "million" to "mebibillions". When asked what prompted the move, an NIST spokesman said, "Initially, it was due to the problem of accurately naming the number of lines of sourcecode some guy wrote for the benefit of RMS' ego. Its just plain silly how much this guy wrote." , later adding, "So, we came to a consensus within the organization that a revision to the basic units of measurement should be made, so it looks like we're busy so we don't lose our funding. In addition, we feel that marketing people should always determine standards, not the engineers and scientists who actually know what they're doing. Its just good sense." Beginning January 1st, the new "mebibillions" unit will take affect.
Mebibillions of people are expected to shake their heads in disbelief at the NIST's continuined stupidity.
:)
Cheers,
Great (Score:4, Funny)
Ok, maybe you won't like this but.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Ok, so did you take a look at the
Re:Ok, maybe you won't like this but.. (Score:2)
It also seems like the
Difference/Cooperatio between DotGNU/PNet and Mono (Score:4, Interesting)
The Mono project seems to be only interested in the C# language/compiler and runtime environment.
It is also interesting that the DotGNU project seems to have put a little more thought into the licensing issue. And in particular what it means to be a derived work (check their FAQ) in the new dynamic code environment that
Even though they are a GNU project they do not not use the ordinary GPL or the LGPL for their work but a GPL plus exception as also is used with GCC. This makes it possible to create derived works (in embedded devices for example where everything is linked together because you don't have a shared library loader) that with "normal" LGPL would be considered derived works.
Which is strange if you think about it. Ximian which sponsors Mono makes use of a more agressive copyleft then the 'regular' GNU project. Which means that if Mono "wins" then we will have more (forced/copylefted) free software then when the GNU project "wins". Never thought that a commercial company would be more agressive about copyleft then the GNU project.
Does anybody have more information about the why/how of the two (competing?) projects?
The DotGNU website and the Mono website don't seem to talk about the other project even though it is obvious that they are doing the same sort of thing.
Here are the main differences (Score:4, Interesting)
- Mono has a nearly fully functional VM with Jit.
- DotGNU has no VM at all
- Mono nearly has a c# compiler written in c#.
- DotGNU intends to use gcc and a C compiled C# compiler.
- Mono has more than 60% of the class libraries written
- DotGNU has only a fraction of classes written.
- Mono is much better coordinated and has better public relations thanks to Miguel
- Mono has regression analysis scripts
- As far as I can tell Mono has better i18n support
Problems with Mono:
- no garbage collection
- initially hosted via Microsoft's
Mono unknowns:
- will it depend on Gtk/GNOME?
Re:Here are the main differences (Score:3, Interesting)
DotGNU Portable.NET has a fraction of classes written, but only because we have 1 very busy developer working full time on this, and my time is split across the entire project. Contributions are always welcome.
DotGNU Portable.NET has garbage collection now, using the Hans-Boehm collector that is used by gcc.
DotGNU has less public relations only because the media have bought into the Mono hype and haven't bothered to talk to DotGNU to get the other side of the story. Even when we seek them out to correct blatant mistakes in their articles.
Benefit of the doubt? (Score:5, Insightful)
How about we give this guy the benefit of the doubt and assume he knows what he's doing. Then what we have is a tremendous contribution to the free software community. I, for one, say thanks and keep up the good work.
And, if it gets released and is full of bugs, then let's beat the old lines-mean-nothing horse to death.
code looks good (Score:5, Insightful)
While I did not go through it extremely carefully, I did read through a few functions, and got an idea of how the programmer thought about things. It seems that the code is pretty tight. It's defiantly not compressed, but it is well modularized and well commented and that's more then I can say about a lot of code that I've seen.
My guess is that this man is a seasoned coder who is very driven, and I applauded his work.
-Jon
Re:Benefit of the doubt? (Score:2)
We would? Sounds pretty cool to me. Gee, if you'd just suspend your skepticism, maybe we could get off this planet.
Uhh... except that part about we'd all be saying "I Captian [sic], I'm givin her all I got". I don't see any point in all of us saying that...
Re:Benefit of the doubt? (Score:2)
The parallels are not there. However, if a lot of scientists much like yourself wern't closed minded and prone to dismiss things out of hand we might actually be doing the things you speak of. The trials and tribulations of Copernicus and Gallileo come to mind when you speak of such closed mindedness.
It seems to me like for all the progress that has been made it could have been made a whole lot quicker. People like you hold back the human race.
-- iCEBaLM
Wait and See (Score:5, Insightful)
1. using a browser redirect is inherently limits the level of security
.NET does in the current form. Any business foolish enough to implement .NET as microsoft prescribes can say good bye to my business. .NET could really be useful and ground breaking, but it is far from enterprise level in terms of reliability, scalability and security. Microsoft's white paper is devoid of specific details about how .NET servers should be clustered for fail-over, state replication/management, load-balancing, using server-to-server authentication and profile retrieval, and security monitoring.
2. any transfer of sensitive information between companies should rely on encryption stronger than 128 SSL
3. using browser redirects means using GET, instead of POST
4. storing user information in plain text as others have mentioned is simply wrong
5. the trust relationship should be two way, not one as stated in microsoft's whitepaper.
Anyone can make RPC fast by limiting security and encryption, which is exactly what
All these little details are needed for real enterprise applications. Without it, it is just begging for trouble. It's great that dotGNU has made so much progress, but perhaps they should have gone a step further than they have http://www.dotgnu.org/web-services.html. dotGNU makes some great points about weaknesses/flaws in .NET, but they still don't go further to really provide a complete solution. The solutions proposed by the dotGNU web services page still fails to address alot of important issues.
IMNHO
Re:Wait and See (Score:2)
Re:Wait and See (Score:2)
Re:Wait and See (Score:2)
J2EE is not a catch all. Only those blinded by the religion of a platform think one language is a cure all.
Re:Wait and See (Score:2)
When I did a capture of the data stream from my browser, all the sensitive information I saw was contained in POST calls using SSL.
oops (Score:2)
MS: Welcome to Microsoft!
in libgc/doc/README.win32: It is likely that some of these have been broken in the meantime. Patches are appreciated.
MS: No problem!
Sorry j/k, no offense.
Ah, the portable .NET (Score:2, Interesting)
Microsoft once again leads the way for Linux. Amazing, isn't it, how many Linux projects are simply clones of existing Microsoft software.
Need a word processor? Get a Word clone. Need a flowchart tool? Get a Visio clone. Need a vector illustrator? Get an Illustrator clone. Can't find a clone? Run WINE and use the original!
For a community that loathes Microsoft, there certainly seems to be a lot of effort to re-create Windows and Windows apps.
Re:Ah, the portable .NET (Score:2)
I would be less critical of M$ if they only wrote applications and did not write operating systems. For example, Photoshop dominates the image-editing market, but it doesn't make nearly as many people mad at Adobe (yes, now there is also the GIMP for *nix).
Nonetheless,
Re:Ah, the portable .NET (Score:2)
Just saying's all...
Re:Ah, the portable .NET (Score:2)
Need a word processor? Get a Word clone. Need a flowchart tool? Get a Visio clone. Need a vector illustrator? Get an Illustrator clone.
Interesting non-sequitur. Word is the only Microsoft product. Visio was fully developed and owned its market share; Microsoft couldn't compete, so they bought it. Illustrator is not an MS product, unless they've bought Adobe when I wasn't looking.
I would point out that if you want to take over the desktop market, you've got to make it easy for people, and that seems to entail cloning the market-leading software packages. Never mind the fact that for programming and serving information there's no MS software to emulate, since Unix pretty much rules there...
Re:Ah, the portable .NET (Score:2)
Ok, I'll bite.
Microsoft Word is itself a clone of WordPerfect or Multimate or WordStar (depending on who you ask). Linux word processors don't need to clone Word: they can clone an original.
Except Microsoft didn't write Visio. They bought it as a finished product with an existing userbase. Linux vector drawing programs were cloning Visio well before it joined the Microsoft stable.
Illustrator isn't even a Microsoft product.
3 strikes. You're out.
Re:Ah, the portable .NET (Score:2)
inVho, its not the product that is so revolutionary, it's the method. and it's free. and its cross platform.
Re:Ah, the portable .NET (Score:2)
I think another important thing for the Linux community to "get" is that merely cloning isn't enough. When I say I'd make the leap to Linux if my B&B apps were cloned, it's only because I generally don't like the MS OS, and not because it'd be particularly beneficial to me to change.
It's not enough to clone: to hook the general population, the products must also have greater functionality. They need to do things just as easily as the MS-platform proprietary wares, plus they must do something additional, powerful, and broadly desirable.
Heckuva challenge.
Re:Ah, the portable .NET (Score:2)
IM again V ho, once installing Linux is easy enough for my grandmother, MS will provide all the negative stimulus necessary for an exodus to the Penguin.
Damn, that's a lot of platforms! (Score:2)
Wow! Linux, Hurd *and* GNU systems? Does it work on Tru64 with the GNU tools? How about AIX with GNU tools? Solaris with GNU?
Contrast that with Microsoft. MS Office, for example, only runs on two platforms: Windows 95/98/XP/ME/NT/2k and MacOS.
Rock on, dotDudes!
Give him the benefit of the doubt (Score:4, Insightful)
125 lines of code per hour
more than 2 lines of code per minute
That's not including coffee breaks, restroom time, foosball, or anything else I need to remain coherent to write code.
5000 lines of code per week over an extended period is a stunning achievement. Give the guy a break.
The actual count: 149,367 (Score:5, Interesting)
./sloccount
Totals grouped by language (dominant language first)
ansic: 121564 (81.39%)
sh: 17160 (11.49%)
yacc: 5634 (3.77%)
lex: 2091 (1.40%)
asm: 1937 (1.30%)
cpp: 961 (0.64%)
exp: 20 (0.01%)
Total Physical Source Lines of Code (SLOC) = 149,367
Development Effort Estimate, Person-Years = 38.37
Schedule Estimate, Years = 2.14
Estimated Average Number of Developers = 17.92
Total Estimated Cost to Develop = $ 5,183,332
It appears that the damn lameness filter is preventing me from posting this, so i have trimmed the output a bit.
Re:The actual count: 149,367 (Score:5, Informative)
This tool basically counts phsysical lines of code (non comments or whitespace) and produces cost and schedule estimates on this count using the standard COCOMO model.
Re:The actual count: 149,367 (Score:2)
I hate to respond to siglines, but does that mean that 640M is enough for any person?
Re:The actual count: 149,367 (Score:2)
Total Physical Source Lines of Code (SLOC) = 149,367
Development Effort Estimate, Person-Years = 38.37
Schedule Estimate, Years = 2.14
Estimated Average Number of Developers = 17.92
Total Estimated Cost to Develop = $ 5,183,332
Hmmmm, one man doing the work of 18, and doing 38 years of work in less than a year... He must be a superman! Either that, or those calculations are very very make-believe.
Re:The actual count: 149,367 (Score:3, Informative)
It would take one average developer 38.37 years to write that much code.
OR it would take a group of 17.92 average developers 2.4 years to write that much software.
This is by no means incredible, it makes sense. There is a huge difference in productivity between average programmers and extremely capable programmers. This is a well known phenomenon.
There is also a lot less than 'average' amount of documentation, testing, and design going on in his work, which makes the SLOC count rise as well.
Remember, this is all averages and assumptions. Its not 'the law'.
Re:The actual count: 149,367 (Score:3, Informative)
I was very careful with the count. I did a complete "make distclean" to remove automatically generated files. I removed imported packages like libffi and libgc which I didn't write. And then I counted up all the lines in all three packages.
I'm an obsessive commentor, but any good programmer should be. Comments help explain the code to yourself six months from now, when you've completely forgotten why you did something a particular way. For a multi-year project like this, obsessive comments are vital.
250,000 lines is a conservative estimate. I've probably thrown away 50,000+ lines of code in the process of building this. Some experiments just didn't work and had to be redone.
Re:The actual count: 149,367 (Score:2)
If you want to be accurate, you would have had to say that there are 250,000 lines of code, documentation, and whitespace.
I recounted including treecc and pnetlib (both of which are very small in comparison) which includes both the *.tc files, as well as the *.cs files and the updated totals are:
Total Physical Source Lines of Code (SLOC) = 209,300
Development Effort Estimate, Person-Years = 54.68
Schedule Estimate, Years = 2.45
Estimated Average Number of Developers = 22.32
Total Estimated Cost to Develop = $ 7,386,680
And that includes 18,000 lines of code in shell scripts (which I usually dont consider either).
If you wanted a true estimate of all code (excluding shell scripts used in configuration, etc) then you are looking at somewhere around: 191,676 SLOC.
Anyway, this is all an academic argument.
Writing that much code by hand is a waste of time (Score:2)
#!/usr/bin/python
print "#!/usr/bin/python"
print "h = open('/dev/null', 'w')"
print "for x in range(1, 1000000):"
print " h.write('All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.\\n')"
I'll leave it to others to debate the utility of my program vs. recreating the .NET framework :).
Re:Writing that much code by hand is a waste of ti (Score:2)
for x in range (1, 1000000):
print "h.write...
5000 lines per week - - IMPRESSIVE!!! (Score:2, Insightful)
To provide further perspective on this impressively rapid rate of coding, I have done some rather rudimentary calculations. All of the figures below proceed with the assumption of a 5-day, 40-hour workweek (which we all know is unrealistic in the world of programming, but for the sake of simple stats it seemed appropriate):
Lines/Month = 21,201.9
Lines/Week = 4,988.6
Lines/Day = 997.7
Lines/Hour = 124.7
Lines/Minute = 2.0
How impressive is that...WOW!!! To think that this man averaged two lines of code per minute throughout the period of an entire year is nothing less than astonishing!!! Of course, these figures are a bit skewed by the means through which I calculated them, but nonetheless, this is quite an accomplishment...
My sincere congratulations and compliments!!!
-n2q
Re:5000 lines per week - - IMPRESSIVE!!! (Score:2)
The code proved damn robust, but I could not maintain that level of production much longer. Then again, it really was about 50k lines of code and was done at the end of those two hellish months, so there was no more to do. I suppose if I had a greater vision, and a solid architecture, work could have progressed.
Oh, it was a mix of C and 80x86 assembler.
The point is, that, yes, 5000 lines per week is doable, but something I doubt I could maintain for a year.
Kudos.
I just don't get it (Score:2)
Now, what about Java? We have open source compilers (e.g., the KOPI kjc compiler), several runtimes (including the ORP runtime, which is quite good), and an open source batch compiler that allows exceptionally easy integration of C++ and Java (GNU gcj). We have lots of open source libraries in Java, more than 100 other language frontends, JNI interface generators (swig), XML libraries, web servers, and lots of tools. Unlike .NET, the Java platform is specified in great detail, with conformance test suites available (in comparison, Microsoft's ECMA submission is a publicity stunt with little real value). The few nice convenience features that C# and .NET have compared to Java could have been added as extensions to Java and its runtime as part of a GNU Java desktop project if people really felt they were necessary. GCC already has a frontend for Java that integrates very nicely with C++, giving developers a migration path from existing C++ code and allowing them to create stand-alone UNIX-style executables. And, unlike C#, Java is very widely taught in schools and at universities and very widely used in industry. And all that Java stuff was available in open source form a couple of years ago already.
Mono just strikes me as a serious case of NIH and people going off wanting to have fun with various new software toys. Well, that's OK, I suppose, it just isn't very utilitarian. OTOH, if this is the route by which Linux programmers finally move to languages and environments that are safe and support component-based software construction, I suppose it's better late than never.
But while .NET won't go away entirely, I believe Java still has the much brighter future, both in industry and in the open source community. You have a handful of open source programmers working impressively and very hard on Mono, but that still pales in comparison to probably thousands of active open source Java developers.
Re:I'll tell you why Open Source dislikes Java (Score:3, Insightful)
Sun's decision had nothing to do with open source. Sun apparently felt that it was necessary to standardize the entire Java platform in order to be useful, and they felt they couldn't do that under ISO's or ECMA's conditions yet.
Microsoft got EMCA approval for C# and its libraries
Microsoft submitted a tiny fraction of the C# libraries for standardization. That isn't comparable to what Sun was doing. What Microsoft did cost them nothing in terms of control or intellectual property, but it was a great publicity stunt.
Sun where you only have a voice if you are a large computer firm that pays $250,000 per year to be heard/ignored in the poorly named "Java Community Process".
Who cares? You don't have to hack Sun's Java. You can hack an open source Java compiler and an open source Java runtime. To go off and start from scratch doing a partial clone of an incompletely specified Microsoft platform instead is throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Mono could be producing a fully backwards compatible, open source system based on Java with any enhancements they like, instead of whining about the JCP.
The CLR VM is also far more advanced than the Java VM from a technical point of view
You have fallen prey to Microsoft propaganda. I have seen no substantial technical enhancements in the CLR over the JVM (although there are a bunch of nice convenience features). And while Microsoft's CLR implementation also has some good parts, it is not as good as Sun's JVM.
and can more efficiently host non garbage collecting languages.
You can only efficiently support manual storage management if you are willing to sacrifice runtime safety. This has been beaten to death in the literature and in practical experiments, and the tradeoff isn't worth it. Just look at the recent experience with garbage collection in gcc to see that manual storage management is both less efficient and more error prone. (Incidentally, C and C++ semantics permit garbage collection, they just don't require it.)
CLR supports delegates which the Java VM has no equivalent.
That's a red herring. You can implement delegates efficiently without changes to the JVM. In fact, Sun considered doing this, but decided to go with nested classes instead. (As an aside, Microsoft's "delegates" have nothing to do with what is commonly understood by "delegates" in the OO literature.)
C# is simply more elegant than Java in a number of ways (such as automatically boxing builtin types for collections,
Automatic boxing/unboxing is an engineering tradeoff, not a question of elegance. Providing it makes it much easier to create performance bottlenecks accidentally. Neither Sun's nor Microsoft's choice is obviously better--it's more a question of psychology than technology.
The most important point is that Microsoft knows how to develop a polished piece of software.
Even if that were true (and I find the claim pretty ridiculous), what possible relevance does it have for Mono, since Mono isn't being developed by Microsoft?
Microsoft has not released a free CLR implementaion for other platforms, and what they have promised (if it ever arrives) is going to be a low-end implementation. Sun has released a high-performance implementation for Windows, Solaris, and Linux, with other platforms based on Sun's code.
Remember until the Sun/Microsoft Java lawsuit that it was Microsoft that had the fastest Java Virtual Machine - not Sun.
That's a myth. The Microsoft Java VM cut lots of corners, sacrificing compliance and safety, and a prerelease version was at some point faster than a delayed update of the JDK. Microsoft lost that temporary lead independent of the Sun lawsuit.
First to market does not necessarily win the race. Sorry, Sun, better luck next time.
Java has already has won the race; it's not going away (and Java wasn't first to market either--both Java and C#/CLR are based on about two decades of experience with other languages). The question is why Mono is getting in bed with Microsoft and picking the runner-up. Sun's support for open source may not be perfect but it has been quite good. Microsoft, however, has declared its fundamental hostility and opposition to open source efforts, and Microsoft, so far, has provided essentially nothing to anybody.
Re:I'll tell you why Open Source dislikes Java (Score:2)
Actually, C# doesn't have any libraries. It is a language and it was submitted in its entirety. As far as the
Re:I'll tell you why Open Source dislikes Java (Score:2)
Why don't you learn about patterns and figure out how to implement "Microsoft delegates" using standard object-oriented techniques (hint: because Microsoft language designers apparently didn't know their OOP basics, "MS delegates" are different from what is commonly called a "delegate", but there are other patterns corresponding to it.)
Please continue wrapping and unwrapping your Java builtin types by hand and write hundreds of lines of mind-numbingly tedious and error-prone code and all the time remind yourself what a noble pursuit it is - because your code is 100% Java(tm).
I don't have such a problem. The JVM supports more than 100 language frontends already. Some of those box/unbox automatically, others don't. They all work together very nicely in a way that is still just vaporware for CLR.
Deflect the point that Sun (a commercial entity) is the sole OWNER of Java and may choose to charge for its now supposedly "free" Java runtime
Who cares? There are open source Java compilers and runtimes that are a lot further along at implementing all of Java than Mono is at implementing C#/CLI/.NET. The fact that Sun makes available a good implementation is an added bonus.
Suckers like you will be left with your mouths gaping wide open asking "Why did Sun lie to us again?".
I have been using UNIX since 1980 and I have never had a problem with Sun's policies. They have contributed more to open source than most other companies. The "suckers" seem to me to be the ones who, after a decade of hardball Microsoft tactics and low-quality Microsoft software, still believe that Microsoft is up to any good.
Do yourself a favor and support an LGPLed standards-based Open Source effort like Mono to ensure software will be free both now and in the future.
If Mono ever gets up to the level of quality of Java, sure, I will consider it. The way it looks right now, that will be many, many years off, and any contributions to it seem like a waste of time. And if the history of the Gnome project is any guide, the people working on Mono will abandon it before it matures anyway.
Re:I'll tell you why Open Source dislikes Java (Score:2)
So, Mister Anonymous Coward, are you then an actual member of the Mono development effort? Is everybody on the Mono project as uninformed as you, or are you special?
Calm down, I also read the error-filled Sun/AlJazeera co-sponsored whitepaper on the evils of Microsoft delegates.
Gee, I haven't. In fact, the only stuff from Sun I ever look at is their API and JVM documentation, just like the only stuff from Microsoft I have looked at is their technical documentation on C# and the CLR. Do you spend all your time looking at white papers? No wonder you are so excited about C#/CLR: Microsoft has a lot of marketing experience.
How can you argue with that simplicity and efficiency?
I didn't say "MS delegates" were bad, I merely pointed out that Microsoft misnamed them. And if people writing a Java-based Mono project felt that they were important, they could have added them. As it turns out, in real life, Sun's alternative is just as good. But how would you know?
I would wager that you are reading this post this from a Windows-based browser (don't worry - your secret is safe with me).
Mozilla on Linux, actually. My job from time to time requires me to port to, and use, Windows. So, unfortunately, I have first-hand experience with the platform and its libraries.
Let's lay down the terms here (Score:2)
For you see, ".NET" is really just a programming platform. Take everything that Windows can do, then wrap it in an object-oriented system, then subtract all the things that suck about Java. That is what
Passport.NET/Hailstorm/etc are just services available to programmers and users that are written with
I can surely write my own Passport-esque system and expose my web services just as passport does. Then you can use my system instead of Microsoft's.
All of this is on top of the fact that VisualStudio.NET is an entirely different beast from the platform/runtime and the services. There again, I can write my own language that compiles to the
Bottom line -- Make it clear to what you are referring:
Platform: Common Language Runtime. Includes Microsoft-IL and set of standard System objects.
Services: Passport/Hailstorm and other webservices. Can be provided by Microsoft or anyone with a webserver running the CLR (or you can write it all up by hand, but it is much easier with the CLR because it was built with that in mind.)
IDE: Integrated Development Environment, VisualStudio.NET; has facilities for 3rd party systems to plug in and be treated as 1st class languages just like VB.NET/C#. Compiles apps for the CLR, and has additional publishing features and tools for developers.
Re:Let's lay down the terms here (Score:2)
> We must be careful not to lump all of the things under the Microsoft
>
> and re-examine what you are saying, and what Microsoft is going on
> about.
>
> For you see, ".NET" is really just a programming platform. Take
> everything that Windows can do, then wrap it in an object-oriented
> system, then subtract all the things that suck about Java. That is what
>
That's nice. I just wish
Wide as the
Ultimately, if all goes Microsoft's way, this amounts to the average home user having an Xbox (whose EULA is going to ultimately make the CueCat's look positively permissive). If you want to play a game, you pay. If you want to play a song, you pay. If you want to run an application, you pay. Microsoft owns. You pay, and pay, and pay. For businesses: substitute XP PC's for Xboxes and pay far more. For developers: pay lots for the tools, you don't want to know what you pay for the servers, and keep on paying. If you want to run another OS, too bad, there aren't any legal ones. If you want to write your own stuff, it's not going to run on Microsoft's stuff without MS say so, and written with MS tools (and much paying).
As for the poor smuck and his quarter million lines of code: he better change the name and quick. If he doesn't, the best he can hope for out of a trademark lawsuit is a settlement to change the name and the license if Microsoft wants his quarter million lines of code, or an order to bury it if they don't want it.
> I can surely write my own Passport-esque system and expose my web
> services just as passport does. Then you can use my system instead of
> Microsoft's.
Better yet, support either Sun's Liberty Alliance or Novell's ZENworks Up. They have a much better chance of unseating MS than you do alone.
Even better yet, think up something new and useful that MS hasn't thought of and spent years working on. Then you can beat them to market and really add something good to OpenSource, instead of just being a copy cat.
Homage to Rodan, most noble Samarai of the Sky, on the occasion of his 45th birthday today!
Re:Let's lay down the terms here (Score:2)
Er, what's that, then? Everything it can do, or everything that it can do well, or everything that it can do that other OSes can't do? Please, clarify; as-is, your comment seems a little... frightening.
why are we bickering about how many lines of code? (Score:2, Interesting)
does it work?
is it buggy?
how reliable is it?
in my opinion well commented code is just as important as the code itself.
what good is code that noone knows anything about except the author?
//comments are a good thing
/* lets not criticize them */
This many lines only show incompetency of coder (Score:2, Interesting)
If it's this long, then it's not a suitable implementation
language.
He should have used a more capable language (read C++)
and avoid rewriting and copy/pasting the whole world
including data structures.
To understand how big code is written: www.kde.org
Well, yes but.... (Score:2)
I agree that function points could be a good measure of progress, but I would like to see a graphical chart of API progress instead. I'm more curious about how much full
Re:Mono misinformation (Score:2, Informative)
Adding C# to GCC is more work than writing a whole compiler (scanner/parser/optimizer).
Also Mono will have a lot of problems as their compiler is *not* self hosting. Ours are .