Mythical man month 10 lines per developer day - how close on large projects? [closed]

Solution 1:

On one of my current projects, in some modules, I am proud to have contributed a negative line count to the code base. Identifying which areas of code have grown unnecessary complexity and can be simplified with a cleaner and clearer design is a useful skill.

Of course some problems are inherently complex and required complex solutions, but on most large projects areas which have had poorly defined or changing requirements tend to have overly complex solutions with a higher number of issues per line.

Given a problem to solve I much prefer the solution that reduces the line count. Of course, at the start of small project I can generate many more than ten lines of code per day, but I tend not to think of the amount of code that I've written, only what it does and how well it does it. I certainly wouldn't aim to beat ten lines per day or consider it an achievement to do so.

Solution 2:

I like this quote:

If we wish to count lines of code, we should not regard them as "lines produced" but as "lines spent". - Edsger Dijkstra

Some times you have contributed more by removing code than adding