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Mythical man month: 10 lines per developer day

blog.ndepend.com

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Re: Mythical man month: 10 lines per developer day

#141

Post by nudpiedo »

pgt wrote: post #73
kjksf wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, we don't misunderstand it. 10 lines per day is just rubbish. Here's an example: https://github.com/sumatrapdfreader/sumatrapdf is code written by 2 people (me and another guy). It's written, documented, tested and bug fixed. It's 110k lines of code. And it's tight. Good luck removing 10k lines of code and not loosing any functionality. Assuming 10 lines per day and round-the-clock 365 days of working, that's 30 m…

It sounds like you wrote 20-30 lines per day part-time over 10 years, which is within an order of magnitude of 10 lines per day for the average developer. Sounds about right to me?

I also think that's correct, regarding the order of magnitude, familiarity with the topic... the 10 lines a day (order of magnitude) could perhaps make more sense from a perspective of cognitive overload.

Re: Mythical man month: 10 lines per developer day

#142

Post by goatinaboat »

virgilp wrote: post #126
thomk wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting so maybe the more accurate way to measure is increase LOC + decrease LOC.

Or even better, don't measure LOC.

Bill Gates said something like measuring progress on a program by LOC was like measuring progress on an aircraft by its weight

Re: Mythical man month: 10 lines per developer day

#143

Post by nudpiedo »

Insanity wrote: post #117
Tade0 wrote: post #52

a professional developer will write on average 10 lines of code (LoC) day. My experience so far is a team of developers can deliver 30-100 LoC per day of front-end code. The team size is of little consequence. It's been hilariously consistent across projects and companies I've been in.

That's a pretty big range - but I'd say frontend code tends to be faster / take up more lines. Center a button, give it a colour, make it responsive and you've probably reached your 30 lines of HTML/CSS :P

but the fine tuning, bugs and corrections, reported issues and other aspects should be part of the metric too. The days were there i barely progress because some alignment is not working and coordination with the design team is taking the time makes it part of the average as well

Re: Mythical man month: 10 lines per developer day

#144

Post by MR4D »

goatinaboat wrote: post #142
virgilp wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or even better, don't measure LOC.

Bill Gates said something like measuring progress on a program by LOC was like measuring progress on an aircraft by its weight

Same metric applies - lighter is better.

;)

Re: Mythical man month: 10 lines per developer day

#145

Post by jborichevskiy »

z3t4 wrote: post #37

Anyone else feel sad when you remove a bunch of code? All those man-hours it took to write that code, and now I'm deleting it all. I believe it's called sunk cost fallacy. I often wish I had a time machine so that I could go back in time and say, hey, this will all be deleted a year from now, go with the other solution instead.

Somewhat, but I feel better understanding that time/code was spent understanding the problem better, and with that knowledge I'm now able to make something cleaner/simpler/more concise.

Re: Mythical man month: 10 lines per developer day

#146

Post by i_haz_rabies »

Spooky23 wrote: post #106
bArray wrote: post #5

What annoys me most about these metrics is that some days zero lines are written. Anything up to a month without results to show. Where, then, does all this time go? Sometimes it's reading existing code. Sometimes it's learning about a new algorithm by reading blogs and papers. Sometimes it's developing test programs to iron out a bug or test out some new code. There used to be one chap in the office that got all the…

That’s fundamentally a lack of respect for the engineering aspect of software systems and a sort of self-loathing embraced by people in the field. Many software roles require what I would call Home Depot skill levels. People at Home Depot take semi-finished materials in a kit and fix their toilet, without understanding how it works. Likewise, some journeyman skilled developer and “code” a sign in page with an API wit…

As someone with Home Depot skills, I 100% agree. I really wish that there was a common distinction. I am not the right person to solve a novel or complex engineering problem. I am the right person to build a product that won't require solving a novel or complex engineering problem. I probably shouldn't be paid like the former, nor should I have to have the qualifications of the former to land a job for the latter.

Re: Mythical man month: 10 lines per developer day

#147

Post by mumblemumble »

goatinaboat wrote: post #142
virgilp wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or even better, don't measure LOC.

Bill Gates said something like measuring progress on a program by LOC was like measuring progress on an aircraft by its weight

"Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight."

I'm no expert in aircraft, but I'm guessing that in both cases the relationship between progress and the metric in question is logarithmic: The first bits to be put place represent the bulk of the (weight|LOC), but only a relatively small percentage of overall time and effort.

Re: Mythical man month: 10 lines per developer day

#148

Post by skore »

HillRat wrote: post #127
bArray wrote: post #5

What annoys me most about these metrics is that some days zero lines are written. Anything up to a month without results to show. Where, then, does all this time go? Sometimes it's reading existing code. Sometimes it's learning about a new algorithm by reading blogs and papers. Sometimes it's developing test programs to iron out a bug or test out some new code. There used to be one chap in the office that got all the…

Fundamentally, that’s why SLOC can be useful as an estimating metric, but terrible as a control metric. SLOC, FP and so on all have their limitations, but they demonstrate that most of the effort-time in a project doesn’t go into putting hands on keyboard. Conversely, trying to monitor developer productivity with SLOC simply reintroduces the conceptual error that the estimation effort attempts to prevent.

Goodhart's law - "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."

I used to work for a company that bills their customers for dev hours spent. The software they put together worked fabulously well - in the production of billable dev hours.

Re: Mythical man month: 10 lines per developer day

#149

Post by mumblemumble »

MR4D wrote: post #144
goatinaboat wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bill Gates said something like measuring progress on a program by LOC was like measuring progress on an aircraft by its weight

Same metric applies - lighter is better. ;)

Hence why the absolute best aircraft are usually made of something like expanded polystyrene.

(At least, that's how it tended to go for the ones I was making as a kid.)

Re: Mythical man month: 10 lines per developer day

#150

Post by anoncake »

thomk wrote: post #124
mumblemumble wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This "LOC as a proxy for productivity" metric seems so much harder to measure in a useful way on brownfield work. On my most productive (in my own estimation) brownfield days in recent memory, the codebase would generally shrink by several hundred LOC. I also find that a huge factor in my code production rate on brownfield projects might not have much to do with me, because it's factors like, "Is the code well-docume…

Interesting so maybe the more accurate way to measure is increase LOC + decrease LOC.

BRB reformatting the codebase.
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