"My point today is that, if we wish to count lines of code, we should not regard them as "lines produced" but as "lines spent": the current conventional wisdom

"My point today is that, if we wish to count lines of code, we should not regard them as "lines produced" but as "lines spent": the current conventional wisdom is so foolish as to book that count on the wrong side of the ledger." -- Dijkstra (https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/EWD1036.html https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/E...) Clearly there's a line beyond which the code is no longer readable, but that is not to say that more lines is better, or that there is no elegance in implementing things more concisely.