Strategic Software Development: Productivity Comparisons of General Development Programs

Productivity has been one of the major concerns with the increasingly high cost of software development. Choosing the right development language with high productivity is one approach to reduce development costs. Working on the large database with 4106 projects ever developed, the authors found the factors significant to productivity. After the removal of the effects of other factors on productivity, they compare the productivity differences of the ten general development programs. The paper supports the fact that fourth-generation languages are more productive than third generation languages.