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Discussion on: LOC is an important metric to measure developer productivity

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joelbonetr profile image
JoelBonetR 🥇 • Edited

The point here is the exaggeration of the specific case.
23 LOC during 2 months is just ridiculous and only I can think of trying to find an explanation to this anomaly, my guess is a sum of:

  • High complexity/overengineered project.
  • The use of acronyms to name classes, entities and so which obfuscates the analysis and adds complexity to the development and maintenance.
  • Very long PR processes (PR->feedback->update->feedback... loop)
  • Bad usage of patterns and issues trying to re-use them in situations where they don't fit.
  • Tones of bureaucracy related to the project (bad Jira model, bad maintained confluence and so).
  • Not enough meetings with clients/whoever to unblock tasks.

Or it just canbe lazy devs 😂 which is the easiest explanation.

I think LOC is important, but there's a range of -25% to +25% regarding project average LOC metric plus taking into account the experience and knowledge level of the developer.
On the other hand, context is needed to evaluate each case, by rule of thumb an analyst dev will provide few lines of code than a dev that just develops.
And so on

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polterguy profile image
Thomas Hansen

On the other hand, context is needed to evaluate each case

One can never generalise, and there are no rules without exceptions, but I've heard too many times people tell me that "LOC is the least interesting measure stick in the world", when this is simply not true ...

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joelbonetr profile image
JoelBonetR 🥇

Agree. On the other hand we can't state that more LOC = better in every case. Most of the time, applying KISS ends up on a more maintainable code :)

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polterguy profile image
Thomas Hansen

I agree, the less code the better as a general rule. However, when the product is code, and the code isn't there, you have a problem ...

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joelbonetr profile image
JoelBonetR 🥇

Hahahaha that's it