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-2000 Lines of Code (2004)

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Re: -2000 Lines of Code (2004)

#31

Post by gjkood »

One of the most interesting experiences I had very early on in my career was reducing a 12,000 line C program to a roughly 1,000 line version (in C itself) without losing any functionality.

No, it had nothing to do with my prowess as a young coder, but solely due to the fact that my predecessor did not know what a function was nor how to use parameters.

He had written unrolled versions of the same piece of code, with embedded SQL with minor variations in WHERE CLAUSE values which could be easily parameterized.

All I had to do after analyzing the code was move the code into a function and loop through it with different parameters values.

Such is life.

Re: -2000 Lines of Code (2004)

#32

Post by josu »

intrasight wrote: post #16
nostrademons wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was someone at Google whose total code delta over his tenure was something like -2M. Yep, two million lines of code deleted. May we all be that productive.

A programming god I'd say

Turns out it was black hat guy (from xkcd) deleting 2M lines of comments.

Re: -2000 Lines of Code (2004)

#33

Post by [deleted] »

monochromatic wrote: post #26
wdewind wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't be so literal about it. I used to get defensive about that question too, but the truth is they aren't asking you how much you are making, they are asking you to start the salary negotiation so they can get a feel for what it's going to take to hire you and describe you adequately to a hiring manager. It's just an opportunity for you both to ballpark the situation and eject early if there's going to be a wide di…

> equally advantageous to both parties There ain't no such thing. Salary negotiations are pretty close to zero-sum.

[deleted]

Re: -2000 Lines of Code (2004)

#34

Post by wdewind »

mgkimsal wrote: post #23
wdewind wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't be so literal about it. I used to get defensive about that question too, but the truth is they aren't asking you how much you are making, they are asking you to start the salary negotiation so they can get a feel for what it's going to take to hire you and describe you adequately to a hiring manager. It's just an opportunity for you both to ballpark the situation and eject early if there's going to be a wide di…

No... there are recruiters who are a lot more invasive and pushy (and a couple employers I've run across). "Proof of previous income" was required at one place I applied years back, and I've heard similar stories from colleagues. No, of course, I don't bother going forward in those situations. "What are you making now?" is crass. The good recruiters I've worked with phrased it as "what are your salary expectations?"…

I guess you're right, that does happen sometimes. In those cases you also shouldn't be mad, though, because they just gave you a crystal clear sign they aren't worth working for.

Re: -2000 Lines of Code (2004)

#35

Post by doorhammer »

bargl wrote: post #7
cpeterso wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

520,000 lines of code per year! :)

Ha, I guess the developers they are hiring used to be sci-fi writers! But don't most writers say the hardest part is cutting words out of their book and cleaning up language? P.S. I don't remember exactly what she put down as my "line-count" I was pretty annoyed at that point, it might have been a much more reasonable 5000. :-)

This reminds me of a quote I enjoy:

"If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter."

Some interesting attributions of that and similar quotes: http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/

Re: -2000 Lines of Code (2004)

#36

Post by some_furry »

willis77 wrote: post #20
nostrademons wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was someone at Google whose total code delta over his tenure was something like -2M. Yep, two million lines of code deleted. May we all be that productive.

"Oh, him? That's Chuck. He just runs our commits through a minifier and takes credit for the lost lines. Means well, but he's kind of a jerk."

This is the funniest comment I've read all week.

Re: -2000 Lines of Code (2004)

#37

Post by wdewind »

monochromatic wrote: post #26
wdewind wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't be so literal about it. I used to get defensive about that question too, but the truth is they aren't asking you how much you are making, they are asking you to start the salary negotiation so they can get a feel for what it's going to take to hire you and describe you adequately to a hiring manager. It's just an opportunity for you both to ballpark the situation and eject early if there's going to be a wide di…

> equally advantageous to both parties There ain't no such thing. Salary negotiations are pretty close to zero-sum.

The actual dollar value is usually literally zero sum, but if you have a family and need a $200k salary with specific benefits as a hard requirement it's going to be helpful to get that out of the way up front. On the same note, if you want a $200k salary and only make $180k it can be useful to say you are currently making $200k. So again, this moment can be advantageous to both parties.

Re: -2000 Lines of Code (2004)

#38

Post by dheera »

pcl wrote: post #11

I wish the output from git diff used red for new lines and green for removed lines...

Stock market indicators in China are reversed in colour from the western world (up=red, down=green). Sometimes I wonder if Github really should be flipping the colours on diffs for Chinese language users for the sake of consistency.

Re: -2000 Lines of Code (2004)

#39

Post by zomgbbq »

Similarly, the number of git-commits is also a poor judge of how much work was done. When CI builds automatically build release notes based off of the git-log since the last successful build, this can be deceiving.

Re: -2000 Lines of Code (2004)

#40

Post by wdewind »

avmich wrote: post #24
wdewind wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't be so literal about it. I used to get defensive about that question too, but the truth is they aren't asking you how much you are making, they are asking you to start the salary negotiation so they can get a feel for what it's going to take to hire you and describe you adequately to a hiring manager. It's just an opportunity for you both to ballpark the situation and eject early if there's going to be a wide di…

In addition to other reasons, it can also be beneficial for any side to postpone this discussion for a later phase.

Yeah I mean it really depends on where you are applying to work. If you are trying to join as a senior member of an organization negotiations have way fewer rules, but if you are applying to Google etc. below a level 4 position it seems pretty reasonable to not need to assert your individuality as an engineer by disrupting the system since you'll be ending up with a standard package anyway. Sometimes you just need to learn how that game is played and play it instead of changing it.
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