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The quote is fantastic and it does bring out an interesting dimension. Not all parts of the code base are equally important. That is for another day. I believe
by boringisnormal 7y ago
The quote is fantastic and it does bring out an interesting dimension. Not all parts of the code base are equally important. That is for another day. I believe you are missing the context. Allow me to explain.
Source lines of code is a proxy to the complexity of the problem in hand. With the assumption that the engineers will not unnecessarily write code just to fill up the code base or pass time, we can safely say that the number of lines of code for a database will be significantly higher than say a networking library. To write more lines of code, we need more engineers. And with more engineers, we uncover a variety of problems.
No accomplished Haskell programmer will agree that Go is a functional language. At least the ones that I know don't. I think FP programmers are not in agreement as to what constitutes a functional language, example Haskell vs Clojure vs Elixir.
- danielscrubs 7y agoSimplicity is a great virtue but it requires hard work to achieve it and education to appreciate it. And to make matters worse: complexity sells better. - Dijkstra My point today is that, if we wish to count lines of code, we should not regard them as "lines produced" but as "lines spent": the current conventional wisdom is so foolish as to book that count on the wrong side of the ledger. - Dijkstra The required techniques of effective reasoning are pretty formal, but as long as programming is done by people that don't master them, the software crisis will remain with us and will be considered an incurable disease. And you know what incurable diseases do: they invite the quacks and charlatans in, who in this case take the form of Software Engineering gurus. - Dijkstra
- boringisnormal 7y agoDifferent times, different people. Do you have anything original to add?