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> Is this not sniping from the sidelines?

No, because I'm hacking too :-)

> Ron criticizes, but doesn't suggest anything better

That's because my whole point is that programming is much too rich and complicated for any one metric to be particularly useful. (Ironically, the exact same thing is true of painting, which is Paul' central metaphor!)

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That's because my whole point is that programming is much too rich and complicated for any one metric to be particularly useful.

I think that's where Paul disagrees. I don't have enough experience to agree or disagree with either one of you - it would be nice if Paul were right, and there were a simple "rule of thumb" metric that could guide him to create the 100-year language, but your point sounds truthy also.

But trying to optimize multiple variables becomes an excercise in game theory. That is a value of each metric's benefit needs to be added for each 'player', the programmer, management, qa, the customer... This becomes an equation that I for one will wait on the Singularity to resolve.

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