7 ms·

>I submited 51k lines of code in January that is well beyond real.

by trhway 5y ago

Mandatum 5y ago
Who tracks that?
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  I had a manager who wanted to track it weekly and put it on a dashboard besides dev names. Thankfully he realized the idea was terrible/other events made it irrelevant, but it was discussed and code written to support doing it.
- cerved 5y ago
  the version control system?
  - oblio 5y ago
    You still to do extra legwork to extract the info. It's not just: git contrib --linecount jdoe
- slt2021 5y ago
  IBM and Microsoft used to do that a little bit more than a decade ago. Not surprisingly it turnes out that counting LOC leads to shitty spaghettincode and copy paste all over the place and complete ignore of DRY principle
  - 2sk21 5y ago
    I mostly worked in IBM research but once spent a few months on assignment in a product developed group in the mid 1990s. At the weekly group meeting, each developer would mention throw many lines of code had been reused. Turned out that there was a big monetary incentive to reuse code so developers would randomly include enormous libraries to pad out their numbers!
- Hallucinaut 5y ago
  At a Tier 1 Investment Bank, there was a manager (ED/MD) from Bear Stearns who said explicitly in his first meeting with the whole department that he will track and rank people in the IT org based upon their lines of code and fire the losers. Everyone. Business analyst? Better find a way to get some code in. PM? Better make that spreadsheet a Java app. Managers even bought Java textbooks to put on their desk as some kind of totem as if their days weren't 100% filled with political skirmishes. Don't think it ever came to pass but this nonsense reaches the highest levels of the wealthiest orgs.
devoutsalsa 5y ago
It’s not a useful metric. Starting a new project with lots of generated code will have thousands of lines of code & it won’t do anything useful.
- trhway 5y ago
  i've never seen people to include the large swaths of generated code into their LOC. Exactly because it takes away whatever little meaning LOC has and makes it absolutely meaningless.
- khazhoux 5y ago
  It’s absolutely a useful metric. I have managed many developers who insist their low LOC is in no way indicative of their productivity. They’ll say others are padding their code with comments, or writing bloated inefficient code, or that they themselves were tackling very tough problems that result in small (but tricky) fixes. Yes, we’ve all encountered that killer deadlock or memory leak deep in the runtime that takes three weeks to debug and then it’s a 2-line fix. But some people pretend that’s how all their work is, when in reality they take a week to fix a css misalignment, or take a week to refactor some simple python script and add one new command-line argument, and they average 50 LOC or whatever.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 5y ago
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  - quadrifoliate 5y ago
    > But some people pretend that’s how all their work is, when in reality they take a week to fix a css misalignment, or take a week to refactor some simple python script and add one new command-line argument, and they average 50 LOC or whatever. You already know what the problem with these people is (e.g. they can take a week to add a new command-line argument). Tying that to the LOC count is counterproductive. Shitty managers like you who try to go against the well-known wisdom and try to use LOC as a metric are what leads to the problem of shitty developers trying to game that count and posting ridiculous metrics like "I checked in 51k LOC in January". Developers who treat their work as a craft will avoid shitty teams like that even if they otherwise do well on the LOC metric.
gnfargbl 5y ago
My first thought when I read that was yikes, that's a lot of bugs for the rest of the team to fix. Unless this is generated boilerplate, it just isn't possible to create that much code, that quickly, and have it be correct.
- speedgoose 5y ago
  And it's a problem too if it's generated boilerplate.
larschdk 5y ago
If you submit 51k lines of code in a month you are not productive. You are a liability. Producing 5-10 lines of quality code per hour is considered good in my world.
Jasp3r 5y ago
Commit 1 yarn lockfile, done

>I submited 51k lines of code in January that is well beyond real.

by trhway 5y ago

>I submited 51k lines of code in January that is well beyond real.

Mandatum 5y ago

Who tracks that?

MattGaiser 5y ago
I had a manager who wanted to track it weekly and put it on a dashboard besides dev names. Thankfully he realized the idea was terrible/other events made it irrelevant, but it was discussed and code written to support doing it.
cerved 5y ago
the version control system?
- oblio 5y ago
  You still to do extra legwork to extract the info. It's not just: git contrib --linecount jdoe
slt2021 5y ago
IBM and Microsoft used to do that a little bit more than a decade ago. Not surprisingly it turnes out that counting LOC leads to shitty spaghettincode and copy paste all over the place and complete ignore of DRY principle
- 2sk21 5y ago
  I mostly worked in IBM research but once spent a few months on assignment in a product developed group in the mid 1990s. At the weekly group meeting, each developer would mention throw many lines of code had been reused. Turned out that there was a big monetary incentive to reuse code so developers would randomly include enormous libraries to pad out their numbers!
Hallucinaut 5y ago
At a Tier 1 Investment Bank, there was a manager (ED/MD) from Bear Stearns who said explicitly in his first meeting with the whole department that he will track and rank people in the IT org based upon their lines of code and fire the losers. Everyone. Business analyst? Better find a way to get some code in. PM? Better make that spreadsheet a Java app. Managers even bought Java textbooks to put on their desk as some kind of totem as if their days weren't 100% filled with political skirmishes. Don't think it ever came to pass but this nonsense reaches the highest levels of the wealthiest orgs.

devoutsalsa 5y ago

It’s not a useful metric. Starting a new project with lots of generated code will have thousands of lines of code & it won’t do anything useful.

trhway 5y ago
i've never seen people to include the large swaths of generated code into their LOC. Exactly because it takes away whatever little meaning LOC has and makes it absolutely meaningless.
khazhoux 5y ago
It’s absolutely a useful metric. I have managed many developers who insist their low LOC is in no way indicative of their productivity. They’ll say others are padding their code with comments, or writing bloated inefficient code, or that they themselves were tackling very tough problems that result in small (but tricky) fixes. Yes, we’ve all encountered that killer deadlock or memory leak deep in the runtime that takes three weeks to debug and then it’s a 2-line fix. But some people pretend that’s how all their work is, when in reality they take a week to fix a css misalignment, or take a week to refactor some simple python script and add one new command-line argument, and they average 50 LOC or whatever.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- quadrifoliate 5y ago
  > But some people pretend that’s how all their work is, when in reality they take a week to fix a css misalignment, or take a week to refactor some simple python script and add one new command-line argument, and they average 50 LOC or whatever. You already know what the problem with these people is (e.g. they can take a week to add a new command-line argument). Tying that to the LOC count is counterproductive. Shitty managers like you who try to go against the well-known wisdom and try to use LOC as a metric are what leads to the problem of shitty developers trying to game that count and posting ridiculous metrics like "I checked in 51k LOC in January". Developers who treat their work as a craft will avoid shitty teams like that even if they otherwise do well on the LOC metric.

gnfargbl 5y ago

My first thought when I read that was yikes, that's a lot of bugs for the rest of the team to fix. Unless this is generated boilerplate, it just isn't possible to create that much code, that quickly, and have it be correct.

speedgoose 5y ago
And it's a problem too if it's generated boilerplate.

larschdk 5y ago

If you submit 51k lines of code in a month you are not productive. You are a liability. Producing 5-10 lines of quality code per hour is considered good in my world.

Jasp3r 5y ago

Commit 1 yarn lockfile, done