An experiment comparing Fortran programming times with the software physics hypothesis

Recent discoveries in the area of Algorithm Structure or Software Physics have produced a number of hypotheses. One of these relates the number of elementary mental discriminations required to implement an algorithm to measurable properties of that algorithm, and the results of one set of experiments confirming this relationship have been published. That publication, while significant, made no claim to finality, suggesting instead that further experiments were warranted. This paper will present the results of a second set of experiments, having the advantages of being conducted in a single implementation language, Fortran, from problem specifications readily available in computer textbooks. The first section of this paper presents the timing hypothesis, and the elementary equations upon which it rests. The second section presents the details of the experiment and the results which were obtained, and the third section contains an analysis of the data.

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