It sounds like you only have a sample set of developers at one company, perhaps being evaluated through the lens of some personal bitterness. It's possible tha

It sounds like you only have a sample set of developers at one company, perhaps being evaluated through the lens of some personal bitterness. It's possible that you may be simply experiencing a case of an organization that uses bad metrics to reward developers: measuring productivity by LoC is basically an industry joke, but still occurs. Other nearly-as-bad metrics like "tickets closed" are common. It may also be a cultural thing at your particular organization, or a reflection on the particular task. What's the use for this code? What is its expected time-in-service? Is this experimental or production code? Is this boilerplate code for an uninteresting problem long solved? Sometimes a mark of a good developer is to know what to spend valuable time on and what not to (as in the problem of premature optimization.) Finally, it's not necessarily a bad habit to ask someone you know has the answer rather than research it yourself, especially if the problem is unimportant/uninteresting/not your area of expertise.