Concept Programming - Pseudo-metrics

Concept programming uses pseudo-metrics to evaluate the quality of code. They are called pseudo-metrics because they relate the concept space and the code space, with a clear understanding that the concept space cannot be formalized strictly enough for a real metric to be defined. Concept programming pseudo-metrics include:

• Syntactic noise measures discrepancies between the concept and the syntax used to represent it. For instance, the semi-colon at the end of statements in C can be considered as syntactic noise, because it has no equivalent in the concept space.
• Semantic noise measures discrepancies between the expected meaning or behavior of the concept and its actual meaning or behavior in the code. For instance, the fact that integer data types overflow (when mathematical integers do not) is a form of semantic noise.
• Bandwidth measures how much of the concept space a given code construct can represent. For instance, the overloaded addition operator in C has higher bandwidth than the Add instruction in assembly language, because the C operator can represent addition on floating-point numbers and not just integer numbers.
• Signal/noise ratio measures what fraction of the code space is used for representing actual concepts, as opposed to implementation information.