Cognitive Information Complexity Measure: A Metric Based on Information Contained in the Software

摘要

Software metrics provide a quantitative basis for the development and validation of models of software development process. Information gained from metrics is used in managing the development process in order to improve the reliability and quality of software product. Different people involved in software engineering use these software metrics at various stages of software development. Software obeys the laws of informatics [14] and hence this paper makes an attempt to demonstrate that the software development lifecycle should also be constrained by the laws of cognitive informatics. Cognitive Informatics is a field that studies internal information processing mechanism of the human brain and its application in software coding and computing. This paper also attempts to empirically demonstrate the amount of information contained in a software and develops a concept of cognitive information complexity measure based on the information contained in the software. It is found that software with higher cognitive information complexity measure has more information units contained in it. Therefore cognitive information complexity measure can be used to understand the cognitive information complexity and the information coding efficiency of the software.