Small Projects Vs. Large Projects

During our work on determining the aspects of programming languages that affect the cost of a software, we came to a conclusion that these requirements varied depending upon the size of the software being developed. We then discussed the major differences between small and large projects and came up with certain characteristics which could be outlined as below:
 
 

Small Projects	Large Projects
Are usually completed by an individual or a small team	They usually have large teams working on them
Typical time for development is in the order of hours to weeks	They usually take months to years to complete
Emphasis is placed on "Getting it done!"	Maintenance plays a bigger role in large projects because the software life cycle is long in duration

 

As we can see from the table above, small projects and large projects usually have different requirements. With the help of these requirements, we were able too identify the most important aspects of programming languages for each of them. They are listed below:
 
 

Small Projects	Large Projects
Familiarity with the programming language	Need to reduce Modular dependencies. For e.g..  Information Hiding Inheritance
Development environment should be friendly	Low Run-time costs
Code Generation	Good software design
Language Simplicity	Good debugging
Ease of documentation	Security of the Virtual Machine
Availability of libraries	Easy interfacing between the modules
	Support for team-work
	Language simplicity
	Ease of documentation
	Availability of libraries

[Note: Keep in mind that these aspects have been listed with the cost of software development and maintenance of the software at a later date in mind.]
 
 
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