> the art of engineering is reducing the amount of code you've to write I would argue that it's _scaling_ software development? Making it so that you can crea

> the art of engineering is reducing the amount of code you've to write I would argue that it's _scaling_ software development? Making it so that you can create bigger programs: that accomodate more contributors, more requirements, faster, with more features, while being more correct, etc, without everything collapsing into spaghetti and chaos? Historically, keeping a close eye on lines of code spent helped a lot along most axes. Finding ways to keep "code spent" down will remain very valuable but I don't think it's the _only_ way to scale? Along the way we've developed architecture conventions, useful interfaces, test practices, standards, protocols, plugins & extension points, package repositories, etc. There are also social technologies like mailing lists, SIGs, bdfls, modern project & product management, etc etc. To the extent that simplicity is measurable (less LoC spent, less code coupling, less cyclomatic complexity) it seems like it can be addressed as an optimisation problem and automated.