Your Java Code Is Mostly Fluff, New Research Finds

itwbennett writes In a new paper (PDF), researchers from the University of California, Davis, Southeast University in China, and University College London theorized that, just as with natural languages, some — and probably, most — written code isn't necessary to convey the point of what it does. The code and data used in the study are available for download from Bitbucket. But here's the bottom line: Only about 5% of written Java code captures the core functionality.

Comments

Re:New research find's water wet

[jd2112]

Yes, but the point is silly anyway.

The notion that everything that isn't core functionality is "fluff", gives the impression that it is non-essential.

Let's say I have a weather application that reports meteorological data for a specific zipcode. Let's say that I have a super slick user interface, and I display animated weather graphics in HD.

Fluff?

Not at all. A spartan application which displayed a bunch of plaintext data might have zero downloads. Sexy, eye candy might equate to 20 million downloads.

Which raises the question: What is the actual point of this app? Is it to display weather information?

No. The point of this app is to get downloaded.

So what's "core" again?

No, the point of the app is to display adds to the user.