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Every single part of that statement is false. Your programmers should be worrying about how large their code is. If they're not, and your competitors are, then
by jmduke 13y ago
Every single part of that statement is false. Your programmers should be worrying about how large their code is. If they're not, and your competitors are, then your competition will release a program that does everything your program does, but better and faster. So what if they're a couple months (or even a few years) behind? First mover advantage is relatively short-lived, anyway. Microsoft Word wasn't the first word processor and Microsoft Excel wasn't the first spreadsheet. Google wasn't the first search engine. Facebook wasn't the first social network.
You're equating code size with code quality, which in my opinion is an unqualified assumption. I'd further argue that its not as if programming hours exist in a vacuum, and its not as if one makes a binary choice whether or not to spend time reducing code size; development time is a precious, precious thing. When given the choice between:
- reducing the size of Microsoft Excel from 15mb to 14mb -- and thus increasing sales by X, where X is the number of people who had hard disk space for 14mb but not 15mb
- and implementing some sort of stretch goal feature (let's call it PowerPivot v0.0.1), and thus increasing sales by Y, where Y is the number of people who make their spreadsheet software purchase decision based on the presence of that feature
I'm fairly confident X < Y.
- quanticle 13y agoYou're equating code size with code quality, which in my opinion is an unqualified assumption. Unfortunately, most of the software engineering literature disagrees. We know few things in software engineering. One of them is more code == more bugs. Your comment about X > Y is true, but you're replacing one false binary choice with another. Again, as Apple has demonstrated over and over again with every single one of their products, fewer features, implemented well will outearn products that have more features implemented poorly. So, I'd argue that the choice isn't between reducing the size of Microsoft Excel from 15MB to 14MB and adding a stretch goal feature. It's between keeping Excel at 14MB (or whatever its old size was), fixing bugs and polishing the hell out of it or growing Excel to 15MB and adding some more buggy half-assed features to fill out the checklist on the back of the box.
- gruseom 13y agoUnfortunately, most of the software engineering literature disagrees. We know few things in software engineering. One of them is more code == more bugs. Quite so. I wish there were more research into the consequences of this. And more teaching of it too, for that matter. It ought to be a much bigger deal than it is.