I have been asked to compare the programming models used by two different OSs for wireless sensor networks, TinyOS (which uses an event-based model) and Contiki (which uses events internally, but offers a protothread model for application programmers). I have developed the same application in both systems, and I can present a qualitative analysis of the pros and cons of both models, and give my subjective impression.
However, I have been asked to put forward metrics for comparing them. Apart from the time spent to write the programs (which is roughly equal), I'm not sure what other metrics are applicable. Can you suggest some?
I ended up using lines of code and cyclomatic complexity to show how different models impact code organization. I also estimated the difficulty of understanding the two programs by asking another programmer to read them.