--- Andy Lester <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Why are we worrying about these automated kwalitee tests? What will
> happen once we find that DBIx::Wango has only passed 7 of these 23
> items on the checklist?
I am not the one to answer this, but I'm curious to know where you are
coming from. Is it:
1) Metrics, in general, are often misused and do more harm than good.
2) The Module-CPANTS kwalitee metrics are poorly chosen.
3) The Module-CPANTS kwalitee metrics are an unwelcome distraction
to CPAN authors who should be focusing on improving their module
quality, not on improving their Module-CPANTS kwalitee score.
4) Schwern's original kwalitee vision in
http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.qa/149
is not worth worrying about.
Or all of the above?
I have sympathy for 1) above because I've seen first hand the dysfunctional
behaviour that can flow from people focusing on improving their metrics
at the expense of doing a good job. For example, a support group whose
performance was measured by the number of calls they closed per month,
so they started to close customer calls and reopen the same issue with
a new call (which annoyed the customer, but, hey, they improved their
"performance"). Many other examples could be given. See also Brian Marick's
"How to misuse Code Coverage" paper.
To clarify point 2) above do you equally feel we shouldn't worry about
the CPAN top 100 code coverage metrics published by Paul Johnson?
Personally, I see the publication of CPAN code coverage and kwalitee
metrics as useful data for CPAN authors to help them improve their
offerings and catch blunders. Of course, they shouldn't become a
distraction from the primary task of producing a "quality" module,
i.e. one with great user interface, doco, performance, robustness,
maintainability, portability, error handling, extensibility, ...
/-\
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