Comments, with reply, on `Predicting source-code complexity at thedesign state' by S. Henry and C. Selig

The commenter objects to the claim made by the authors of the above-mentioned article (see ibid., vol.7, no.2, p.36-44, 1990) that Halstead's E (effort) metric has been extensively validated and to a lack of precise definition for units of `elementary mental discrimination.' With regard to the first point, S. Henry points out that since E seems to give an indication of error-prone software, it must be measuring some aspect of the source code, and that many studies have shown high correlations between effort and lines of code and McCabe's cyclomatic complexity. She agrees with the commenter's second point