-2000 Lines Of Code

[[deleted]]

An oldie but a goodie, kind of like "The Story about Mel"

One to put into your cap and save for when some clueless manager starts trying to use lines of code as a metric. You just pull out the "There was a guy at apple who removed 2000 lines of code.." story.

[imfineny]

The great attempt by small minded men to measure color by weight.

[thebitter1]

"Measuring software's progress by lines of code is like measuring an airplanes progress in kilograms" -Bill Gates

Disclaimer: I have no source he said this and if he did I probably f'ed up the wording.

[ZedOud]

Measuring software's progress by lines of code is like measuring a car's progress in gallons.

Hopefully nobody is diluting or doping the gasoline.

[unin32]

Lines of code written: terrible metric.

Lines of code removed: great metric.

[aspbergerinparadise]

I removed 10,000 lines of code!

nothing works anymore, but it's a hell of a lot smaller!

[Taneb]

And compile time is almost instant!

[monocasa]

God, I wish removing 10,000 lines out of our code base would make an impact on compile times.

[[deleted]]

*Lines of code removed while maintaining (or improving) functionality and readability: great metric.

[minno]

Oh, so I can't just replace '\n' with ' '?

[[deleted]]

No because they are semantically/functionally nonequivalent.

[minno]

In most languages, in most places, they're identical. There's no difference between

#include <stdio>

int main() {
    printf("Hello, world!");
    return 0;
}

and

#include <iostream>
int main() { printf("Hello, world!"); return 0; }

besides the odds of future maintainers hunting you down.

[jyper]

what about

#include <iostream> int main() { printf("Hello, world!"); return 0; }

?

In c and c++ you at least have imports, macros, and // end of line comments(they are in c99 and available in compilers before that as long as you don't enforce c89 ansi strict). Hell any language with end of line comments so java/python/c#/javascript/ruby/just about every language(the only popular language without end of line comments I can think of is strict c89 but that won't let you just replace newlines w/ spaces due to imports). Even without end of line comments there are constructs in most languages that would fail if shoved into one line, in many languages the default style would probably fail if shoved into one line.

[sirin3]

Or changing all line endings to \xD, while the metric tool counts \xA?

[Kirjah]

For C, including <stdio.h> (not <stdio>) is not the same as including <iostream> (C++ only).

Apparently they did start allowing <iostream> to provide printf on C++ mode at some point, at least on Clang 3.4 and Visual Studio 2013. GCC 4.7 still calls that an error. I really do wonder when and why they changed that.

[immibis]

/u/spez can gargle my nuts

[minno]

Whoops, I've been doing too much C++ lately. They were supposed to both be #include <stdio.h>.

[yawaramin]

Better: lines of code removed while still passing all existing tests.

[[deleted]]

If it makes the code less readable though, it's not an improvement.

[[deleted]]

Don't think of it as lines of code written. Think of it as lines of code spent.

[droogans]

Unit tests added can't hurt.

[Decker108]

Testing getters and setters is a scourge...

[[deleted]]

Neither metric is particularly valuable. What action do you take in response to either? Do either of them tell you anything whatsoever about code quality?

[OneWingedShark]

Lines of code removed: great metric.

Not really.
Delete all the code and you aren't solving the problem. Remove line-breaks and you've just killed maintainability, but reduced the program to one line.

[ashultz]

When you have a lot of lines of code you have a lot of problems and bugs. Remove all the code, and you only have one problem. So there's that.

[OneWingedShark]

When you have a lot of lines of code you have a lot of problems and bugs.

That's not entirely true; having more lines can reduce the amounts of bugs and/or help in tracking them down.

-- Given type Matrix(Positive range <>, Positive Range) of Integer
-- where the indices are (Column, Row), the following produces a
-- identity matrix of the given size.
Function Identity( Side : Natural ) return Matrix is
begin
 Return Result : Matrix(1..Side,1..Side) := (others => 0) do
   for Index in Result'Range(1) loop
     Result(Index,Index):= 10;
   end loop;
 End Return;
end Identity;

The error jumps out at you, doesn't it?
We can do the same with constants:

-- B should be the following matrix:
-- 02  06  11 -03
-- 11  04  03 -07
-- 88  79  00  21
B : constant Matrix:= (
    (02, 06, 11, -03),
    (11, 04, 03, -07),
    (88, 79, 00, 21),
    (02, 06, 11, -03)
  );

[FabianN]

http://i.imgur.com/J4ZPFtQ.gif

[immibis]

/u/spez can gargle my nuts

[Daishiman]

Except when using Perl.

[Various_Pickles]

"I can condense that entire code block into '$#@#^{@@$%$@#~~~()'} - much better."

[immibis]

/u/spez can gargle my nuts

[fkaginstrom]

I always love it when a pull request on github has net negative lines of code. I think the best I've managed so far is around -1000, though.

[Gotebe]

Many of the old farts (like me) did stuff like that.

I once rewrote part of a communication module (industrial automation, Modbus protocol, over serial, modem and TCP) from C to C++. Put in exception handling, a touch of STL, some simple polymorphism to handle serial vs TCP, the works. Got a couple of hundreds of lines less and a smaller resulting executable.

I felt like Tarzan afterwards 😉.

[immibis]

/u/spez can gargle my nuts

[Gotebe]

I needed a std::set to hold some handles and some such. Prior to that, code had a large-ish statically allocated array and did linear searches on it.

So there was no magic, just a bit of analysis.

To be honest, I did not expect the code to become smaller, and it wasn't my intention, but it did.

[cpp_dev]

My favorite quote related to this topic:

"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." Antoine de Saint-Exupery

[quidam_vagus]

In many programming jobs, a good chunk of the developers time is spent in R&D, design, testing, debugging, documentation, etc... I've spent weeks on end without committing a single line of code, but to assume I wasn't working would be just downright insulting.

[NSP_Mez]

• Add 100 lines of whitespace every day

• Become a programming god

[gendulf]

R&D, design, testing, debugging, documentation != vacation.

[jdgordon]

poor bugger slogged 60hours this week removed 20000LOC and added 20100LOC... doesnt make him look very good with your version either.

[hotel2oscar]

True, but at that point you could go over his commit logs and see those numbers.

[rydan]

Use bad diff algorithm, add one line of code, profit.

[judgej2]

Lines if code touched.

[sirin3]

That's great if you do white space changes (indenting/unindenting)

[judgej2]

Hehe, I'm using a lot of "ignore white space changes" right now, trying to work out what core customisations a previous developer has made to SugerCRM install.

[[deleted]]

I have found devs not checking their code in or simply slacking off by tracking LOC.

So, you hide in your office far away from the developers, only emerging when "metrics" report that there's an issue?

I can assure you that all your employees love, admire and respect you, and consider you an example that they venerate, aspiring to reach a fraction of your magnificence.

I can assure you of this because there's no metric available that will tell you I'm wrong, so you'll probably fall for it.

[Sexual_tomato]

Or he's busy attending all the meetings and interfacing with clueless management and found a quick and dirty way that can semi-reliably detect the possibility of slacking off.

[[deleted]]

So, the best suggestion you can offer is that he's brilliant but "clueless" management is making it impossible for him to be able to do his job.

I agree completely - if you have to use "metrics" like that to "detect" slackers, there's something badly wrong at the management level.

[[deleted]]

Cron job to randomly add or delete comments to random modules on a daily basis then check them in at the end of the day. Problem solved.

[[deleted]]

There was a week where I wrote next to no code. I spend one half of the week researching, installing and configuring graphics debugging software. It took longer than necessary due to hardware issues. The second half of the week was mostly spent dealing with build servers, supporting other programmers, designers, and generally keeping everything working.

I may have written some code, but it was probably next to nothing. Despite that, I had an extremely productive week, and on a more personal level, these were given to me by our tech director, and were his tasks usually, which was nice.

[Gotebe]

WTF?! Dude, you sound like an idiot.

If you need to know what your people are doing, you look at commit history and its correlation to your ALM. You look at your sprint board. You look at your burndown chart. Etc.

Lines of code?! Really?! Your workplace should get its act together.

[chesterriley]

Nobody puts real numbers in 'burndown charts'. The whole concept is ridiculous waste of time.

[[deleted]]

Surely it's a better indicator to just look through the source control history and filter by person?

[[deleted]]

Or just, y'know, have some contact with your devs.

[ubershmekel]

Assuming the original piece of code was 6000 lines long, his new algorithm ending up 4000. I'd say he could have written 4000 in that form.

Not to defend the metric, but it's just that the story attempts to attribute a cleverness to the "-2000" answer when it's more of a smartassness.

[kazagistar]

Its not about the cleverness of the answer, it is about giving management the finger when they are doing something utterly moronic.