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It's Not About Lines of Code
Charles Connell writes: "What makes a programmer highly productive? Is it lines of code per
day? Lines of good code? In this article, I examine the concept of software
productivity. I look at some of the standard definitions for productivity
and show why they are wrong. I then propose a new definition that captures
what programming really is about." Read on for Connell's stab at a better way of evaluating the worth of programmer time.
CT Originally the contents of an article were here but there was
a communication problem resulting in us thinking we were given permission to
print the article here. Now that things have been cleared up, we've linked
the
original article which you can read instead.
Sorry about the inconvenience.
Yeah, that's great, but what manager works like that? No manager would ever say to me "John, how long would this take you?" for a project with a 6 month or 1 year time frame, and then leave me alone for 6 months while I write code. Managers want progress reports and statistical measures to reduce the risk that that they might get fired when the project they're managing fails. That's where the boneheaded requests for the "number of lines of code you've written this week", or "number of bugs you've fixed this week" come from. It's hard to look at an unfinished piece of software and know how it's coming along, but it's easy to look at a painting or a statue that's in progress and see work being done.