Com S 541 -- Programming Languages 1			January 19, 1993

   HOMEWORK 0-F: The Economic Impact of Programming Languages

Due: January 24, 1992

You have been hired by a program director at the national science
foundation (NSF), who sponsors software engineering research.
This person wants to know if all that research in programming languages
that goes on down the hall makes any economic difference to the country.
(If not, then why not put that money into software engineering research
where it will do some good?)  Your task is to find out.  The program
director wants you to find hard evidence, if possible, about productivity
and costs (money) associated with different kinds of programming languages,
if possible.  But you can also speculate about employee satisfaction,
and what the economic impact might be in the future.
You might find the following references helpful.
Barry W. Boehm, ``An Experiment in Small-Scale Application
Software Engineering'', IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering,
(Volume SE-7, Number 5, Sep. 1981, Pages 482-493.),
Barry W. Boehm, ``Software Engineering Economics'',
(1991, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.).
You might also look for other more recent published studies.

This is a group project.  Your group is to
	* prepare a written summary of your arguments, and
	* make a short (about 5-6 minute) oral presentation
The style of oral presentation is up to you; you can have one
person talk, or several.

(If you need transparencies or copies made, let Gary know
far enough in advance to have them made in time for the class.)