I'm spending a lot of time choosing the right backend for an advertising platform. I haven't really written a line of code for a month that I intend to keep. Am I 4000 lines behind then? Then again, maybe I'm doing exactly what the article prescribes: thinking ahead, carefully choosing my libraries, thinking through every use case and then hopefully saving my future maintenance programming a ton of headaches.
You only get 1,000 lines of code a week
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Re: You only get 1,000 lines of code a week
#12It depends on what career trajectory a senior developer is. If he is destined to become a specialist, then this article is spot on. If instead he dreams of becomming a manager or architect, then he would actually not be coding the most complicated parts, and make sure to keep himself off the critical path of the project, so as to free up his time, so he can spend his time helping his colleagues and clearing the rocks…
For a manager, I agree. An architect should write the most complicated, not the least complicated, part of code. This is assuming that the architect is the most experienced developer on the team. This doesn't include paper architects, which are pretty much salespeople. I would like to hear other people's thoughts on this - this is the way that I have always handled projects.
I suppose whether or not I agree depends on what you mean by complicated: there's complexity of an algorithm implementation and there's complexity of program structure.
I would think that you'd want an architect to work on non-tight-loop, core-to-the-control flow complexity, and leave the optimization of tight loops and such to people with more time to focus on the details of that (eg, what processor is being used), and instead work on the complexity of the control/data flow abstractions, which is what he already knows the most about, having designed their architecture.
This also keeps his role as central organizer of the code and flow through it, rather than having his time sidetracked (partially) by other concerns.
Re: You only get 1,000 lines of code a week
#13Actually 1,000 lines of code a week is quite a lot. Of course it depends on language / technology stack, I'm speaking from Rails / JavaScript programmer point of view.
1,000 lines are probably not as much as you think. For web developers, if you included HTML, CSS, JavaScript, CGI language and SQL you can easily get over 1,000 characters in a week. (That's only about 25 lines an hour for 8 hours/day 5 days/week.)
Re: You only get 1,000 lines of code a week
#14Actually 1,000 lines of code a week is quite a lot. Of course it depends on language / technology stack, I'm speaking from Rails / JavaScript programmer point of view.
Same here.
The German Wikipedia page for LOC (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lines_of_Code) says that usually 10-50 LOCs per day are normal which would be 70-350 LOC per week.
Re: You only get 1,000 lines of code a week
#15Actually 1,000 lines of code a week is quite a lot. Of course it depends on language / technology stack, I'm speaking from Rails / JavaScript programmer point of view.
1,000 lines are probably not as much as you think. For web developers, if you included HTML, CSS, JavaScript, CGI language and SQL you can easily get over 1,000 characters in a week. (That's only about 25 lines an hour for 8 hours/day 5 days/week.)
I'd struggle to think in a job which required 25 lines an hour ever, let alone constantly for 8 hours/day!
I don't think I've ever written more than a few hundred LOC in a week.
Re: You only get 1,000 lines of code a week
#16Actually 1,000 lines of code a week is quite a lot. Of course it depends on language / technology stack, I'm speaking from Rails / JavaScript programmer point of view.
Still it's not a metric. I know people that use ruby in a way that every 6-lines method of mine, could be 1 (hard to read, sometimes extremely cryptic) line of theirs. I'm not sure you can measure, not even using third party apps.
Every metric can be gamed. You need a trustful relationship for it to work.
Re: You only get 1,000 lines of code a week
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
For a manager, I agree. An architect should write the most complicated, not the least complicated, part of code. This is assuming that the architect is the most experienced developer on the team. This doesn't include paper architects, which are pretty much salespeople. I would like to hear other people's thoughts on this - this is the way that I have always handled projects.
I suppose whether or not I agree depends on what you mean by complicated: there's complexity of an algorithm implementation and there's complexity of program structure. I would think that you'd want an architect to work on non-tight-loop, core-to-the-control flow complexity, and leave the optimization of tight loops and such to people with more time to focus on the details of that (eg, what processor is being used),…
That is how I have it as well. With our projects usually the architect would write the framework of the product at the beginning of project, almost being the only developer on the project.
As other developers start getting on the project he guides them where their code should live, and he start to disengage writing and serve more in a guiding role.
Re: You only get 1,000 lines of code a week
#18Actually 1,000 lines of code a week is quite a lot. Of course it depends on language / technology stack, I'm speaking from Rails / JavaScript programmer point of view.
1,000 lines are probably not as much as you think. For web developers, if you included HTML, CSS, JavaScript, CGI language and SQL you can easily get over 1,000 characters in a week. (That's only about 25 lines an hour for 8 hours/day 5 days/week.)
Every time I get anywhere near that sort of number, I look at it, and factor out all the boilerplate I'm almost certainly writing.
Re: You only get 1,000 lines of code a week
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
1,000 lines are probably not as much as you think. For web developers, if you included HTML, CSS, JavaScript, CGI language and SQL you can easily get over 1,000 characters in a week. (That's only about 25 lines an hour for 8 hours/day 5 days/week.)
I'd struggle to think in a job which required 25 lines an hour ever, let alone constantly for 8 hours/day! I don't think I've ever written more than a few hundred LOC in a week.
What kind of projects do you work on? I'm sure the experience differs a lot between people working on important, complex legacy projects, and people developing consumer mobile apps for photo sharing etc.
Re: You only get 1,000 lines of code a week
#20People seem to be focusing on the number of lines. I think the point is just to recognize you have limits, be realistic on what you can accomplish alone and accept help from others where it is possible.