Does anybody know of a study documenting that measuring and reporting software code quality metrics actually improve the project/product team's ability to deliver?
So far I've only found studies documenting that measuring code quality improve the team's ability to improve the measurement figures. That doesn't count. More or less any measurement will be gamed if anyone think they are used for something. But has anybody measured if these measurements actually are helpfull?
The problem with formal methods is that any useful program must interact with its environment (customers, filesystems, networks, sensors etc) in order to make a difference, and nobody is able to capture, comprehend or relate to the full specifications of those items and their subsystems. This results of proofs based on a lot of incorrect and incomplete assumptions.
This problem apparently even extends to the model-checking software itself, resulting in systems reported to be correct when then network message saying it is flawed was lost:
This is a fantastic challenge for computer engineers: create an interpreter or compiler for a programming language, based on statistic modeling. How likely is it that combining the token "foo" with "bar" using a mathematical operator is a valid construct, based on experience from other programs? What will the resulting value usually be, based on prior experience?