A study on immutability usage

[Russel Winder]

On Wed, 2012-10-03 at 00:37 -0400, Jeff Nowakowski wrote:
> On 10/01/2012 09:39 PM, Bernard Helyer wrote:
> >> Our results from 14 Java applications
> >
> > Only 14? So it's a useless statistic.
> 
> No, that isn't true. How many language decisions in D are based on an 
> analysis of even 5 programs, let alone 14? What if you were testing to 
> see how fair a coin was, and it came up heads 14 times in a row? Would 
> you have a very strong suspicion that the coin was biased? This isn't an 
> idle question, as this kind of question happens a lot during preliminary 
> testing of medical treatments, for example.
> 
> How many examples you have to look at depends on what you are looking 
> for and the kind of results you get.

If we were to study software now in the way Richard Helm, Erich Gamma et
al. did in the early 1990s would we find Proxy, Façade, Builder, etc. of
course we would since the feedback loop of people knowing about them
causes them to use them. So we now have a self-fulfilling prophesy, and
a design loop it is impossible to escape from.  

-- 
Russel.
=============================================================================
Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200   voip: sip:russel.winder at ekiga.net
41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077   xmpp: russel at winder.org.uk
London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk  skype: russel_winder
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 198 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://lists.puremagic.com/pipermail/digitalmars-d/attachments/20121003/1026076e/attachment.pgp>