Question

I have to submit a paper about the usage of source code metrics in software engineering processes. I thought it would be nice to start by introducing some categorization of source code metrics (for example using plane LOC count Vs doing some static analysis of the code) , but I can’t find a book or article that will present the different types of metrics and possibly some historical background information (books and article are favored by my instructor over web sites).

any one knows of such a source ?

Answer 1

Pressman’s Software Engineering: A Practitioner’s Approach has a lot of good information on software metrics (among other things).

Probably the key piece of advice on metrics is to be careful what you measure. If you measure LOC, that’s what people will concentrate on.

“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”

–Albert Einstein

“Measuring software productivity by lines of code is like measuring progress on an airplane by how much it weighs.”

–Bill Gates