Thread: Lines of code per day.

Interesting story. Our lecturer in sofware design told us just two days ago that the most common cause for failed software projects is that the sponsor (of whatever kind - monetary, company politics, ...) pulled out.

Anyway, I think the LoC company is pretty much an urban legend. I imagine that early translation secretaries (before computer time was cheap enough that compilers were worth it) were measured by lines of code they could translate - just as today's compilers' speed is measured in LoC/min. Then there was IBM, which was rumoured to have this system. But I'm not sure about that. After that, any company that would be stupid enough to introduce such a system would remove it within a month - or go bankrupt. It just doesn't work.

I have never worked at a company that measured performance in lines of code.
Do lines in a design/implementation/scope document count?
If I did work for such a company (which would not be for long) I can easily make 10s of lines of code into 100s of lines of code (doing the same thing).

If your boss is planning to introduce it, ask them what _exactly_ is a line of code? That is, make them understand exactly what they are actually asking for AND to put that into a formal code development guidelines document.
Do they take away lines that don't work or never get called?
I think they will then give up.....

ie how many lines is this?

Code:

int SomeClass::SomeMethod(int input)
{
            if(input<minInput)
            {
                 return 0;
            }
            else 
            {
                  input++;
            }
             return input;
}
//is it the same number as this?
int SomeClass::SomeMethod(int input)
{
           if(input>=minInput) 
                   return input++;
           return 0;
}

Following some DIY this week, here's an analogy.

LoC per day is like measuring your performance at applying paint in terms of area covered per unit time. Painting a wall is easy and productive (apparently), but the intricate detailed work around the edges of the windows seems to do very little, but is far more important to get right.