HAHA, really ?

**frodobaggins** · 10-08-2004, 12:26 AM

From here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_metric

* Commercial programmers write about 12,000 lines of code per year.

Hell, I've wrote about 80,000 lines of code already this year. (Not all for FP)

Frodo

**Arathranar** · 10-08-2004, 12:40 AM

I write that in a month (full debugged) when I'm going full bore. But I do end up with periods where all I have is meetings... ;-p

**mushin** · 10-08-2004, 12:44 AM

Depends alot on what you do, I imagine. Obviously if your job is generally debugging / maintanence of code, you'll tend to write very few lines. Research oriented projects can produce alot less lines of code; I do machine vision stuff, and some of that is pretty dense, but not that many lines of code. And of course there's individual differences in code verbosity.

I wonder where those "rules of thumb" stats come from.

**god_of_cpu** · 10-08-2004, 12:46 AM

I work for a government contractor with a CMM level 5 rating... The set policy, by the government, for lines of code a day that a programmer is expected to produce for the current project I'm on is 7 lines and with all the documentation that has to take place, thats about all that normally can get done in a day.

**Tidder** · 10-08-2004, 12:50 AM

How does that work? Write a line of code, then write a book of paperwork about what the line is and why you chose that particular line over all the other choices available at the time?

**god_of_cpu** · 10-08-2004, 12:56 AM

Originally Posted by Tidder

How does that work? Write a line of code, then write a book of paperwork about what the line is and why you chose that particular line over all the other choices available at the time?

Your actually not far off. Alot of it comes from bugs. All code needs to be inspected and documented, which isn't too bad if you wrote alot of code, but whenever there is a bug, even if its a 1 line change, you have to create a problem report 3+ pages, then it gets a priority after a meeting in which they decide whether its work fixing now or later, then a programmer fixes (which is the easy part), then it has to be inspected, which requires at least 10 pages on top of the code thats been changed with check lists and a report of the changes etc. After the inspection theres then testing reports and finally signoff reports. After alls said in done, even if you have to make just a 1 line change to released code, your looking at at least a week before you can actually get it done and coordinated.

Its pretty ridculous, particularly when you consider its costing the taxpayer about $300 per line of code.

I don't even want to get into "No change" PRs, which are problem reports that are generated and require no change to code, but still require the paper work

**Tidder** · 10-08-2004, 12:58 AM

Good god man. I just like throwin' my own code around, lettin' it all hang out, and that be the end of it.

**frodobaggins** · 10-08-2004, 12:58 AM

crazy

**Tidder** · 10-08-2004, 01:04 AM

Kinda funny to think about... Ok now, we're gonna write 1 line of code men... you, take this half of the keyboard. You, take the other half. Now you, stand here and take notes. You 3 talk about this line and see if it's implementation is needed now, or tomorrow. Once you decide, I'll command these men here to create the code. Then you original two will key it in! You, note boy, write a novel about this code, and why it is so great and powerful and wonderful!

Just a little gov't humor...

**kingtut** · 10-08-2004, 01:04 AM

Outside the government, in corporate America, it is expected that a full time programmer should deliver 20 lines of code/day. That is for non CMM organization, but basically, same PS, reports, reviews, meetings, etc, etc...