It would be foolish to explicitly pay for lines of code, but there are lots of situations where that happens implicitly. Most programmers get paid by the hour,

It would be foolish to explicitly pay for lines of code, but there are lots of situations where that happens implicitly. Most programmers get paid by the hour, and consistently produce about the same number of lines of code per hour. Most large contracts are billed according to the perceived magnitude of the task. The value to the client is more important than the cost to the contractor, but the cost is still a factor. And for a contractor who has already decided which programmers will work with which tools, that cost is directly proportional to lines of code.