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“15k would be a delight”, implies that 250-300k is not a delight. It sounds like your loss of interest may be correlated with your level of discomfort with inc

“15k would be a delight”, implies that 250-300k is not a delight. It sounds like your loss of interest may be correlated with your level of discomfort with increased cognitive load.... the alternative explanation would be strange: you can only be interested in simpler problems/implementations. (Which I doubt)

bobwaycott 8y ago
No, it’s nothing to do with the cognitive load. And I said nothing about discomfort. That’s a pretty interesting interpretation you’ve drawn. I build things from scratch. By the time a project hits that size, I’m utterly bored with it. It’s been figured out and built. It’s been refactored. It’s been tuned in places that need performance improvement. It’s had new features added in. But fundamentally, the idea(s) behind the software have become completely boring. 5 years of working on the same thing through multiple iterations—including reducing LOC while expanding features. There’s a certain project size that I’ve found correlated with time ticking my internal interest clock to 0. It’s a bit like how Professor Farnsworth feels when there are no more questions. Edit: I’m not very good at describing my feelings. Delight was a poor word choice. For me, 15K is typically early in a project, when there is still delight to be found in figuring out the problem space. The unanswered questions are delightful, interesting, thought-provoking. Bringing Professor Farnsworth into it, i was reminded of him saying it was the questions that drive him.
- rujuladanh 8y ago
  LOC is a very bad estimator of complexity. There isn't a need write 100K LOC to figure out "the problem space" either.
  - bobwaycott 8y ago
    I never suggested LOC was an estimator of complexity. Heck, I’m not saying anything about complexity at all. Nor did I indicate there was any need to write a single line of code to figure out a problem space. You may be taking my statement either too literally or out of its intended context.

bobwaycott 8y ago

No, it’s nothing to do with the cognitive load. And I said nothing about discomfort. That’s a pretty interesting interpretation you’ve drawn. I build things from scratch. By the time a project hits that size, I’m utterly bored with it. It’s been figured out and built. It’s been refactored. It’s been tuned in places that need performance improvement. It’s had new features added in. But fundamentally, the idea(s) behind the software have become completely boring. 5 years of working on the same thing through multiple iterations—including reducing LOC while expanding features. There’s a certain project size that I’ve found correlated with time ticking my internal interest clock to 0. It’s a bit like how Professor Farnsworth feels when there are no more questions. Edit: I’m not very good at describing my feelings. Delight was a poor word choice. For me, 15K is typically early in a project, when there is still delight to be found in figuring out the problem space. The unanswered questions are delightful, interesting, thought-provoking. Bringing Professor Farnsworth into it, i was reminded of him saying it was the questions that drive him.

rujuladanh 8y ago
LOC is a very bad estimator of complexity. There isn't a need write 100K LOC to figure out "the problem space" either.
- bobwaycott 8y ago
  I never suggested LOC was an estimator of complexity. Heck, I’m not saying anything about complexity at all. Nor did I indicate there was any need to write a single line of code to figure out a problem space. You may be taking my statement either too literally or out of its intended context.