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> i.e. "Getting X amount of business value cost us Y lines of code"? it's not the lines of code that costs, but time. It may be OK to use lines of code as prox
by chii 3y ago
> i.e. "Getting X amount of business value cost us Y lines of code"?
it's not the lines of code that costs, but time. It may be OK to use lines of code as proxy for time spent - but that sort of assumes that each line took similar amounts of time to write. I am not sure that's really the case, but even if it is, hiring somebody more competent will get more lines in less time!
Therefore, why not just measure the time directly?
- hamandcheese 3y agoIt costs time to write the code, yes, but the liability of that code existing will cost an additional, unknown amount at some indeterminate time in the future.
- flkenosad 3y agoOr that code existing will bring an additional, unknown at some indeterminate time in the future, cost savings when you go to implement a nearly identical feature and you find out you won't be needing to start from scratch as you already have all this well tested, named and organized code to pull from as you craft a new solution. Your perspective just needs a shift from negative to positive.
- hamandcheese 3y agoI see that happen maybe one or two times a year, at most. Meanwhile I debug broken code literally every day.
- layer8 3y agoThe cost lies in the existing code’s implication on future maintenance and changes. You can’t measure that future time cost until it’s too late.