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-2000 Lines of Code (2004)

folklore.org

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Re: -2000 Lines of Code (2004)

#13

Post by dennisgorelik »

RossM wrote: post #4

Google Cache[1]. Reminds me of that TDWTF post where engineers were paid based on the amount of lines of code they had written - led to massive comment blocks explaining the simplest things ("This is a for loop that works by..."). [1]: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sourceid=chrome...

Only wusses need comments in order to bloat their code. There are so many "effective" alternatives.

Re: -2000 Lines of Code (2004)

#15

Post by RossM »

dennisgorelik wrote: post #13
RossM wrote: post #4

Google Cache[1]. Reminds me of that TDWTF post where engineers were paid based on the amount of lines of code they had written - led to massive comment blocks explaining the simplest things ("This is a for loop that works by..."). [1]: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sourceid=chrome...

Only wusses need comments in order to bloat their code. There are so many "effective" alternatives.

Oh yes, if I had it my way we'd all write for loops like so:

    int i = 0;
    int count = 20;
    
    while(
        (i  count)
    )
    {
        // some code
    }

Re: -2000 Lines of Code (2004)

#16

Post by MikeCapone »

dennisgorelik wrote: post #12
mrduncan wrote: post #11

Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight. - Bill Gates

I never saw this quote in the past, but apparently it's quoted a lot. And it's so true.

Too bad that it doesn't seem like Microsoft applied that philosophy to most of its products (at least not back when I used their products. Maybe they've started recently -- I've stopped following them a few years ago when I bought a Mac).

I wonder if any ex-Microsoft employee ever came out and said that they actually had the explicit goal of making each successive version of their main products (windows, office) much slower than the last so that people would upgrade to a new computer, making Intel happy, and leading to more "comes with the computer" licenses instead of pirating.

Re: -2000 Lines of Code (2004)

#18

Post by Roboprog »

This was pure joy to read. Management asks for something foolish and counterproductive, and then one of the top techs pushes the absurdity right back in their faces -- take this: obvious big win, but a drastic opposite delta by your crude, misguided, metric!

My kids stared at me laughing very loudly for quite a few seconds :-)

Re: -2000 Lines of Code (2004)

#19

Post by NathanKP »

I've seen this great folklore story hit the front page of HN more than a few times, but it is worth it every time. It is a good reminder for every programmer that verbose, complex solutions aren't necessarily good ones.
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