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It’s unfair to quantify it as amount of code, it might be excellent but longer programs and complexity isn’t always better for debugging, understanding, and mai

It’s unfair to quantify it as amount of code, it might be excellent but longer programs and complexity isn’t always better for debugging, understanding, and maintenance even if performance is better simpler code that is lazier isn’t always worst.

khazhoux 5y ago
Absolutely. I have a longer comment elsewhere in this thread to that effect. There are certainly plenty of Dragon-level bugs that takes weeks to debug, and then it's a single-line fix. A guy on my team once spent something like a month to figure out that the the race-condition in our application runtime was due to a fixed-sized array in linux kernel's library table. It was a one-line patch, and a hell of a debugging exercise. That guy rocked!! But all things more-or-less equal, if one guy is landing 15 lines of code in the repo a month, and everyone else is landing hundreds a week or whatever, then that guy better be able to show that he is actually tackling really tough problems.
- GhettoComputers 5y ago
  Yeah it’s really unfortunate that volume is spoken of as a good measure, like the failed idea that programmers need to write an amount to be considered productive. You can hire an inexperienced lawyer for less money and have the case take longer and maybe get more money, or they can be experienced lawyers who still know intricacies but need more time, effort, and work for a higher payout. You get a quick experienced lawyer who charged you a lot more per session, you get advice that cuts down on busybody work and your case is simplified and you move on with your life to spend time doing other things. Complexity is a trade off. It’s often seen as more work, but more work isn’t always better.
  - khazhoux 5y ago
    To run with your analogy, the OP's example is more like a lawyer you hire to do a job, and they do the job well and completely, just by filing a standard form on Monday morning... and then bill you for 50 hours. The job got done so there's no problem, right? (* like all analogies, this one's obviously not perfect)

khazhoux 5y ago

Absolutely. I have a longer comment elsewhere in this thread to that effect. There are certainly plenty of Dragon-level bugs that takes weeks to debug, and then it's a single-line fix. A guy on my team once spent something like a month to figure out that the the race-condition in our application runtime was due to a fixed-sized array in linux kernel's library table. It was a one-line patch, and a hell of a debugging exercise. That guy rocked!! But all things more-or-less equal, if one guy is landing 15 lines of code in the repo a month, and everyone else is landing hundreds a week or whatever, then that guy better be able to show that he is actually tackling really tough problems.

GhettoComputers 5y ago
Yeah it’s really unfortunate that volume is spoken of as a good measure, like the failed idea that programmers need to write an amount to be considered productive. You can hire an inexperienced lawyer for less money and have the case take longer and maybe get more money, or they can be experienced lawyers who still know intricacies but need more time, effort, and work for a higher payout. You get a quick experienced lawyer who charged you a lot more per session, you get advice that cuts down on busybody work and your case is simplified and you move on with your life to spend time doing other things. Complexity is a trade off. It’s often seen as more work, but more work isn’t always better.
- khazhoux 5y ago
  To run with your analogy, the OP's example is more like a lawyer you hire to do a job, and they do the job well and completely, just by filing a standard form on Monday morning... and then bill you for 50 hours. The job got done so there's no problem, right? (* like all analogies, this one's obviously not perfect)