5 ms·

I've written several 100ks LOC/year at points in my career- but exclusively when working on new projects. When maintaining projects I might go a week at a time

I've written several 100ks LOC/year at points in my career- but exclusively when working on new projects. When maintaining projects I might go a week at a time without writing any code solo, or I might spend a week trying to _reduce_ LOC.

dmoy 3y ago
I think my net contribution of lines of code at my current company is still negative. It was for a long time, but I haven't checked in awhile so I'm not sure if it still is.
- dharmab 3y ago
  Usually I end up adding more lines of documentation and tests and removing lines of application code so it's not easily measurable- on theme for this thread, heh
- allenrb 3y ago
  I remember times at a few of my jobs, just absolutely cheering for someone’s PR that was filled with red. Good times.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- esafak 3y ago
  At my last company we had an architect whose only direct coding contributions were deletions, because nobody gets credited for cleaning up code.
jongjong 3y ago
My problem in my last role when I read large Pull Requests is that they tended to be way more complicated than they should have been but because they worked and I couldn't single out a small number of specific problems, I had no choice but to approve. Still, I knew it would slow us down in the medium and long term but this bloat is completely invisible to management. It has become taboo to say things like "This code is too tightly coupled", "You don't need to add an external dependency for that", "The inputs to those methods are too complicated; your components are micromanaging each others' state", "You're violating separation of concerns", "The cyclomatic complexity of this code is too high; you could simplify all your if-else statements"... When it's not my company, it's impossible to dismiss code when it works right now, even though it is likely to break later.
- throwaway92837 3y ago
  Right. This is where you would think the AI assistance could play an important role: Warning: it looks like you’re trying to pack too much crap into a single PR and your peers are unlikely to understand what they are accepting.
  - charamis 3y ago
    The person who would ignore the reviewer’s recommendation in this case, would probably also ignore the AI’s as well.
- dharmab 3y ago
  I sometimes use my job title as a higher level senior or lead to say vulnerable things like: "This change is hard for me to read and understand" or "This is a large PR, and it may be difficult for me to schedule time to review it. Can it be split up into a series?" I also configure linters and code quality tools to automatically flag some of the more egregious problems.
  - jongjong 3y ago
    I can relate though I wish I could get into a position that I could say such things and not get fired. In some circles "This change is hard to me to read and understand" would be interpreted as "I'm an aging dinosaur who doesn't understand this new tech; you youngsters are too clever for me." (though I realize how completely wrong it is). I'm 33 but I feel like I already have to make an effort to avoid the dinosaur label. I disagree with a lot of modern tech trends but I simply cannot express my view about them even though I could explain the problems very clearly and logically and can provide far better and simpler alternatives. Unfortunately, hype does not yield to reasoning... And sometimes, you're too far into the tech debt and it doesn't make financial sense to rewrite.
    - padjo 3y ago
      I’m 10 years older, my experience has been that getting to ask stupid questions is one of the joys of age/seniority/security. Very often everyone else in the room has the same stupid question but you get to look like a stone cold genius because you were willing to risk looking silly.

dmoy 3y ago

I think my net contribution of lines of code at my current company is still negative. It was for a long time, but I haven't checked in awhile so I'm not sure if it still is.

dharmab 3y ago
Usually I end up adding more lines of documentation and tests and removing lines of application code so it's not easily measurable- on theme for this thread, heh
allenrb 3y ago
I remember times at a few of my jobs, just absolutely cheering for someone’s PR that was filled with red. Good times.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
esafak 3y ago
At my last company we had an architect whose only direct coding contributions were deletions, because nobody gets credited for cleaning up code.

jongjong 3y ago

My problem in my last role when I read large Pull Requests is that they tended to be way more complicated than they should have been but because they worked and I couldn't single out a small number of specific problems, I had no choice but to approve. Still, I knew it would slow us down in the medium and long term but this bloat is completely invisible to management. It has become taboo to say things like "This code is too tightly coupled", "You don't need to add an external dependency for that", "The inputs to those methods are too complicated; your components are micromanaging each others' state", "You're violating separation of concerns", "The cyclomatic complexity of this code is too high; you could simplify all your if-else statements"... When it's not my company, it's impossible to dismiss code when it works right now, even though it is likely to break later.

throwaway92837 3y ago
Right. This is where you would think the AI assistance could play an important role: Warning: it looks like you’re trying to pack too much crap into a single PR and your peers are unlikely to understand what they are accepting.
- charamis 3y ago
  The person who would ignore the reviewer’s recommendation in this case, would probably also ignore the AI’s as well.
dharmab 3y ago
I sometimes use my job title as a higher level senior or lead to say vulnerable things like: "This change is hard for me to read and understand" or "This is a large PR, and it may be difficult for me to schedule time to review it. Can it be split up into a series?" I also configure linters and code quality tools to automatically flag some of the more egregious problems.
- jongjong 3y ago
  I can relate though I wish I could get into a position that I could say such things and not get fired. In some circles "This change is hard to me to read and understand" would be interpreted as "I'm an aging dinosaur who doesn't understand this new tech; you youngsters are too clever for me." (though I realize how completely wrong it is). I'm 33 but I feel like I already have to make an effort to avoid the dinosaur label. I disagree with a lot of modern tech trends but I simply cannot express my view about them even though I could explain the problems very clearly and logically and can provide far better and simpler alternatives. Unfortunately, hype does not yield to reasoning... And sometimes, you're too far into the tech debt and it doesn't make financial sense to rewrite.
  - padjo 3y ago
    I’m 10 years older, my experience has been that getting to ask stupid questions is one of the joys of age/seniority/security. Very often everyone else in the room has the same stupid question but you get to look like a stone cold genius because you were willing to risk looking silly.