RE: Source code statistics ...

Andy Levy [mailto:andy.levy_at_gmail.com] writes:

> That's pretty much what I told the PM in my example. Several times
> over. I told him I judge progress on the number of features/requirements
> which have been completed successfully, not how many times I hit the
> Enter key. Even explained that sometimes I'll remove lines along the
> way because I found ways to re-use stuff I'd written before. Didn't
> matter. He liked raw LOC numbers. My guess is he was comparing notes
> with some of his friends about their programmers.

It can be worth pointing out analogies in fields that pointy-haired
managers might understand a little better. Measuring programmer
productivity by lines of code is like:

* Measuring the performance of a stockbroker by the number of trades
  he makes, rather than the amount of profit that comes out of them.

* Measuring the performance of a commedian by the number of jokes in
  his script, rather than by how many people come to his shows.

* Measuring the performance of a shole salesman by how many people he
  sees, rather than how many shoes he sells.

Hey, this is fun...

Lines of code are not *completely* useless as a measure: they can give
you a rough idea of how much disk space you need, how long builds will
take, and so on.

--
John Dallman
Parasolid Porting Engineer
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