Thread: Lines of code per day.

  1. #1
    Malum in se abachler's Avatar
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    Lines of code per day.

    Ive heard people talk abotu jobs where they measure your performance in lines of code per day, adn while I personally think its a retarded way to measure performance, I am curious as to exactly how many lines the average company that does this expects from a programmer per day.

  2. #2
    Code Goddess Prelude's Avatar
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    I imagine it would vary wildly depending on what exactly you're writing.
    My best code is written with the delete key.

  3. #3
    pwns nooblars
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    As far as I know this is a practice that is no longer in use.

  4. #4
    Officially An Architect brewbuck's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by abachler View Post
    Ive heard people talk abotu jobs where they measure your performance in lines of code per day, adn while I personally think its a retarded way to measure performance, I am curious as to exactly how many lines the average company that does this expects from a programmer per day.
    Incredibly complicated question. Is it new development, bug fixing, or long-term maintainance? What languages are in use? How much programmer time is consumed in design phase, if any? What happens when you write a negative number of lines of code (i.e., you remove code), how does that affect the metric?

    As far as anecdotal evidence, on a peak day when I am doing NEW development I produce maybe 2000 lines of code. But there are days I only write maybe 10-15 lines of new code, days where all I'm doing is fixing bugs, which is typically a net change of 0 lines of code, and days where I'm not programming at all.

  5. #5
    Malum in se abachler's Avatar
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    All of that is why I hold the opinion that I do, as well as why I think most intelligent managers have stopped this hethen practice. I was just wondering what sort of figures had been thrown out there back when this was seen as a best principle and practice. I am certainly not trying to defend it or to figure out how to implement it, I just want to laugh at some of the actual numbers people have expected.

  6. #6
    Ethernal Noob
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    Lines of code that actually works? If not I qualify.

  7. #7
    and the hat of int overfl Salem's Avatar
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    Through the life of the project (from requirements to delivery/maintenance), that is to design, code, debug and test, and if you factor in all the people on the project which don't write code at all (managers, support staff), then you might be looking at something as low as 1 line of code, per person, per day.

    As brewbuck says, when you finally get to sit down and write something, you can really crank the code out. But there are a hell of a lot of days when not a lot seems to happen.

    > I am curious as to exactly how many lines the average company that does this
    > expects from a programmer per day.
    Or measure how many bugs they add per day

    Experienced programmers tend to have a lower apparent productivity for a couple of reasons.
    1. They get given the hard problems to solve, which involve a lot of thought as well as good coding skills. So whilst the noob can crank out a few 1000 lines of UI code, the experienced programmer is left to work on say a FFT implementation (with some serious maths), and also to wonder how to make it run within the memory and time constraints of the embedded system. It might be only a few hundred lines, and it might take a couple of weeks to get right.
    2. In the midst of all that, the experienced programmer knows enough to test their work effectively to ensure that the number of bugs raised later is minimal.
    If you dance barefoot on the broken glass of undefined behaviour, you've got to expect the occasional cut.
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  8. #8
    The superhaterodyne twomers's Avatar
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    In one of my classes the lecturer was saying that when he first started working his first project took about 7 months, or so, to complete but for the first six he was concentrated nearly completely on research, giving 0 lines (or close on it), for 5.5, 7 months. Obviously towards the end he wrote more and more.

    >> FFT implementation (with some serious maths)
    Just butterfly it into submission! Muahaha!
    Last edited by twomers; 10-19-2007 at 11:44 AM.

  9. #9
    Malum in se abachler's Avatar
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    This is one of the reasons why i get irritated when my boss insinuates that he is considering this crap. Im working on a project right now that has taken 6 months to get to where we are, one guy (me) doing all the research and programming. The general feeling in the industry is that it couldnt be done for another 30 years, if ever. So I spent 5 months writing this app that was 99.9% finished, we only had one minor issue left to resolve and I have a solution for it already figured out. So my boss comes in at the last minute and decides that we are going to go an entirely different direction because we arent making a big enough use of his NN class in the application. So I basically wasted the last month hacking up a simulation that was good enough to test his theory and he cant accept that it doesnt work. We are 3 weeks from a major demonstration and the application needs another 6 weeks of work (as it was). The publisher pulled out and the other partner lost his spot in the show. Looks like this ship is going down, but of course its because Im not generating enough friggen lines of code a day. He even accused me the other day of 'coasting'.

  10. #10
    Officially An Architect brewbuck's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by twomers View Post
    >> FFT implementation (with some serious maths)
    Just butterfly it into submission! Muahaha!
    I prefer using FFTW myself, although I'm not sure how good a choice that is on an embedded system.

  11. #11
    Officially An Architect brewbuck's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by abachler View Post
    So my boss comes in at the last minute and decides that we are going to go an entirely different direction because we arent making a big enough use of his NN class in the application.
    Wow, that's dumb. Take a working system and break it just because he wants his own "pet code" in there somewhere? What sort of background does this guy have?

  12. #12
    Malum in se abachler's Avatar
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    He has a PhD in physics.

  13. #13
    The superhaterodyne twomers's Avatar
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    >> He has a PhD in physics.
    So? That doesn't mean he has a good business or mang head!

  14. #14
    Officially An Architect brewbuck's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by abachler View Post
    He has a PhD in physics.
    Ahh, the typical physicists' ego, I know it well.

  15. #15
    Still A Registered User DISGUISED's Avatar
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    This is the beauty of working with an iterative and evolutionary development process. You know what you have to achieve in an iteration up front, and anything you don't get done you just de-scope to later iterations

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