Browsing by Author "Humphrey, Matthew C."

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    Comparison of an Object-Oriented Programming Language to a Procedural Programming Language for Effectiveness in Program Maintenance
    Henry, Sallie M.; Humphrey, Matthew C. (Department of Computer Science, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, 1988)
    New software tools and methodologies make claims that managers often believe intuitively, without evidence. Many unsupported claims have been made about object-oriented programming. However, without scientific evidence, it is impossible to accept these claims as valid. Although experimentation has been done in the past, most of the research is very recent and the most relevant research has serious drawbacks. This paper describes an experiment which compares the maintainability of two functionally equivalent systems in order to explore the claim that systems developed with object-oriented languages are more easily maintained than those programmed with procedural languages. We found supporting evidence that programmers produce more maintainable code with an object oriented language than a standard procedural language.
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    A Controlled Experiment to Evaluate Maintainability of Object-Oriented Software
    Henry, Sallie M.; Humphrey, Matthew C. (Department of Computer Science, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, 1990)
    New software tools and methodologies make claims that managers often believe intuitively without evidence. Many unsupported claims have been made about object-oriented programming. However, without scientific evidence, it is impossible to accept these claims as valid. Although experimentation has been done in the past, most of the research is very recent and the most relevant research has serious drawbacks. This paper describes an experiment which compares the maintainability of two functionally equivalent systems, in order to explore the claim that systems developed with object-oriented languages are more easily maintained than those programmed with procedural languages. We found supporting evidence that programmers produce more maintainable code with an object-oriented language than with a standard procedural language.
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    Efficient Computation of Voronoi Diagrams
    Humphrey, Matthew C. (Department of Computer Science, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, 1988)
    Voronoi diagrams have advantages of representing geometric information in a compact form which makes them well suited for robot path planning. However, researchers have often found them too complex and inefficient. In this paper, two alternate views of Voronoi diagrams, the Standard [SHAMM75a] and the generalized [KIRKD79] are reviewed. A new method to approximate the Voronoi diagram is developed while showing how all three can be effectively used in applications. Finally, the three methods are compared showing their relative strengths and weaknesses for robot path planning.
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    Evaluation of the Maintainability of Object-Oriented Software
    Henry, Sallie M.; Humphrey, Matthew C.; Lewis, John A. (Department of Computer Science, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, 1990)
    Empirical research is one way of testing software engineering methodologies. Many claims of the advantages of the object oriented paradigm have been made by research. Our work involves empirical projects in an attempt to validate these claims. This paper describes an experiment which compares the maintainability of the two functionally equivalent systems in order to explore the claim that systems developed with object-oriented languages are more easily maintained than those programmed with procedural languages. We found supporting evidence that programmers produce more maintainable code with an object-oriented language than with a standard procedural language. Another on-going research effort attempts to measure the reusability of objects (written in C++) versus the reusability of procedures (written in Pascal). These experiments involve students, but unlike other published reports, deal with large systems.