My worry with large code bases is not so much about performance, or bloat. It's: bugs. One of the first lessons I learned same 30 years ago in CS class was tha

My worry with large code bases is not so much about performance, or bloat. It's: bugs. One of the first lessons I learned same 30 years ago in CS class was that invariably you'll find at least 3 bugs/kloc, regardless of where those 1000 lines of code came from. Highly critical battle tested code tended to have less, but even code where those 3 bugs had been fixed, ultimately given enough time would turn out to have yet another 3 bugs (on average). That's scary! My professor suggested 2 ways to mitigate: 1. create robust systems that can handle malfunctions 2. never write a single line of code that doesn't need to be written Ps. Don't think it's fair to attribute Linux's vast code base to IDEs.