Everybody here is having a great time beating this mostly-dead horse, but I know for a fact that I have more productive weeks and less productive weeks, and in

Everybody here is having a great time beating this mostly-dead horse, but I know for a fact that I have more productive weeks and less productive weeks, and in those less productive weeks I usually write way less LOC. What's more, if you just slightly adjust this metric to "patch size", as in count lines added as well as lines removed, you'll get a more accurate measure, and also make the linked story moot. Measuring developer progress is incredibly hard, but we have to do it anyway, and "use your gut" cannot be the only advice on this. At the very least, comparing this metric for the same person over different periods of time can give you a clue as to how they're doing.