The Application of Halstead’s Software Science Difficulty Measure to a Set of Programming Projects

Abstract

The difficulty measure, as defined by Halstead [1], is shown to have useful applications in the measurement of certain properties in code implementations. This difficulty measure reflects the effort required to code an algorithm, to test it, to inspect and review it, and to understand it later when the code needs alterations.

This paper explains how the difficulty metric reveals insights to the structure of a program module and also to some possible code impurities within the module. It also shows that assembler language programs are significantly more difficult than higher-level PL/S language programs. The author proposes that a maximum level (or threshold) of difficulty should be established to help manage the complexity of programs.