Timeline for Do professional software developers write an average of 10 lines of code per day?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
42 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Dec 30, 2017 at 8:25 | comment | added | Stack Exchange Broke The Law | A lot of the effort is spent changing existing lines rather than adding new ones. | |
| Dec 21, 2017 at 19:35 | answer | added | tj1000 | timeline score: -4 | |
| Dec 17, 2017 at 1:33 | comment | added | Chloe | Anecdotally this seems right. I'm like a freight train. Slow to start, but once I get going, can't stop. Some days a lot, some very little. Recently I had to implement Stripe payment processing using wire transfers. Half the time was spent reading and figuring out the docs - getting a handle on their API. A lot of lines were written, only to be thrown away during testing. | |
| Dec 17, 2017 at 0:22 | history | edited | Nat | CC BY-SA 3.0 | added 223 characters in body |
| Dec 13, 2017 at 21:35 | comment | added | daniel | Someone should combine this answer and this one to find how many software engineers worked at Ford skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/39559/11686 | |
| Dec 13, 2017 at 17:29 | answer | added | future of civ6n is ass3d | timeline score: 8 | |
| Sep 20, 2017 at 6:26 | comment | added | MarcusJ | That's the current revisions of my source, if I were to go through all of my commits (my biggest project has had over 51,722 lines written and replaced through out most of it's history (I didn't start out using version control)) my average would be much higher, 94.2 repeating lines per day by that measure. | |
| Sep 20, 2017 at 6:20 | comment | added | MarcusJ | I just took ALL the code I've worked on ever, in just source and headers, I've got 923 kilobytes (on a Mac so base 10, not 2) of code, which equals 11,531.725 lines (I divided the byte count by 80 because I'm lazy), or about 20 lines of code for me per day. | |
| Sep 4, 2014 at 9:40 | history | protected | CommunityBot | ||
| Aug 9, 2013 at 21:48 | comment | added | Martin Schröder | A datapoint: The linux kernel has ca. 15.000.000 LOC and is estimated to be "worth" ca. 50.000 "man"-years. | |
| Aug 9, 2013 at 13:06 | comment | added | Shadur-don't-feed-the-AI | @user357320 You're forgetting to factor in the lines that are written but don't make it to the final product. When programming a project I could very easily wind up writing 300 lines of code in the space of two hours, then spend the rest of the week and next week debugging, tweaking, yelling at the compiler, realizing that two of the functions I'd originally written won't actually work, then erase half of them and restructure the rest into something that /does/ work. End result: two weeks of work, 150 lines of code. | |
| Aug 9, 2013 at 9:31 | comment | added | Karlth | Programming consists of two phases: Development and maintenance. Based on experience I'd say that during development programmers write hundreds, if not more, lines of code per day. While during maintenance output probably falls into the 10s and less. | |
| Aug 8, 2013 at 2:20 | comment | added | travisbartley | Thanks for the critiques and edits, everyone. You really made the question a lot better than the original. My intention was not to fact check the book, but to provide a factual reference for the "10 lines of code/day" myth, because I know it gets bounced around a lot with no real thought to the facts. I want people to find this and get the facts when they search "programming 10 lines per day." I understand why we must use a notable claim. Also, I would like to clarify that the question here was not intended to be "was the book accurate," but "is the book still accurate today?" | |
| Aug 6, 2013 at 23:51 | answer | added | Larry OBrien | timeline score: 25 | |
| Aug 6, 2013 at 20:53 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/#!/StackSkeptic/status/364851750823395328 | ||
| Aug 6, 2013 at 17:38 | comment | added | rjzii | @vartec Don't forget that the staying power of the LoCs is also a factor as well. I might technically write more code when doing blue sky development, but if almost all of that code is thrown away then the actual LoC might be quite low. | |
| Aug 6, 2013 at 17:21 | history | edited | user5582 | CC BY-SA 3.0 | added a contemporary claim, and focused the question |
| Aug 6, 2013 at 17:01 | comment | added | user5582 | @ChrisW Thanks, that looks good. Ill work that more current claim into the question. | |
| Aug 6, 2013 at 16:51 | comment | added | ChrisW | @Sancho FWIW, there are many such claims; e.g. the COCOMO averages on codinghorror.com/blog/2006/07/… imply 10 to 20 LOC /day, depending on the project size. Can you improve the question? | |
| Aug 6, 2013 at 16:27 | comment | added | user5582 | @chrisw, then we need a notable claim that it is still true today. | |
| Aug 6, 2013 at 16:21 | comment | added | ChrisW | @vartec That is half of the claim which is being questioned: whether it takes as long to write a line of C as it does to write a line of Python, which results in greater productivity using Python, to whatever extent (you allege "6.5") Python is more expressive. | |
| Aug 6, 2013 at 16:08 | comment | added | vartec | I imagine it strongly depends on the project. I'd expect a lot of new LoCs created in greenfield project, and very little when maintaining production project. Also it's worth to remember, that less is more. I can be a lot more effort to write same logic with 10 lines, than just don't care about efficiency and write it in 100 lines. Another thing is that programming language vary by expressive power, for example 1 line of Python would be equivalent of 6.5 lines of C. | |
| Aug 6, 2013 at 16:00 | comment | added | ChrisW | @DJClayworth The present tense is used everywhere, in the question's title and text. I would expect the past tense, if the OP were asking whether it used to be true. | |
| Aug 6, 2013 at 15:45 | comment | added | DJClayworth | The question wasn't "is this still true" it was "was Brooks right in what he wrote". | |
| Aug 6, 2013 at 15:29 | comment | added | ChrisW | @DJClayworth The 'seminal book' was first published in 1975. IMO a good answer would say whether the quoted metric is still true today, and state the sources of the (more recent) data, instead of simply 'appealing to authority'. | |
| Aug 6, 2013 at 15:23 | history | edited | rjzii | CC BY-SA 3.0 | Updated title to include average note |
| Aug 6, 2013 at 15:13 | comment | added | DJClayworth | "Is there any weight to this claim?" Yes. It was published in a seminal book by one of the most respected software writers. | |
| Aug 6, 2013 at 13:20 | comment | added | Oddthinking♦ | The question now has appropriate quotes for notability. Thank you. Let's take the rest of the discussion about notability demands to chat or meta. | |
| Aug 6, 2013 at 13:18 | history | edited | Oddthinking♦ | CC BY-SA 3.0 | Link to book, inlined links, other minor tidy up. |
| Aug 6, 2013 at 13:12 | history | reopened | Oddthinking♦ | ||
| Aug 6, 2013 at 13:11 | history | edited | ChrisW | CC BY-SA 3.0 | add relevant quotes from the source |
| Aug 6, 2013 at 10:59 | comment | added | ChrisW | ... To deliver a project with 30,000 lines of code, expect this to take more than 20 months of coding, plus more than 20 months of non-coding activities (e.g. design, documentation, and management), plus more than 15 months of testing. | |
| Aug 6, 2013 at 10:59 | comment | added | ChrisW | There's a lot of data on this subject, with references, in amazon.com/Software-Estimation-Demystifying-Practices-Microsoft/… I don't have my copy of that book with me, but I copied the following data from it two years ago: For a project whose size is between 1000 and 100,000 lines of code, expect from 400 to 833 lines of code per month. Effort varies non-linearly with project size and complexity, but 400 LOC/month is in the same ballpark as 10 LOC/day. Note that this estimate of average LOC/day includes the project's non-coding activities, for example ... | |
| Aug 6, 2013 at 10:35 | history | notice removed | Mad Scientist♦ | ||
| Aug 6, 2013 at 10:28 | history | closed | Oddthinking♦ | Needs details or clarity | |
| Aug 6, 2013 at 10:28 | comment | added | Oddthinking♦ | I had quick search through the book. I cannot find any claim of this form. He does reference some studies of lines-per-year. Please include a quote of the claim from the book, so we are not targeting a strawman. As this is going to attract poor answers before this is resolved, I am putting on hold. | |
| Aug 6, 2013 at 10:10 | history | notice added | Jamiec♦ | Needs citation | |
| Aug 6, 2013 at 10:04 | history | edited | travisbartley | CC BY-SA 3.0 | deleted 69 characters in body |
| Aug 6, 2013 at 9:55 | history | edited | travisbartley | CC BY-SA 3.0 | deleted 287 characters in body; edited title |
| Aug 6, 2013 at 9:40 | history | edited | travisbartley | CC BY-SA 3.0 | added 71 characters in body |
| Aug 6, 2013 at 9:36 | comment | added | Martin | Somewhat related question at SO: Mythical man month 10 lines per developer day - how close on large projects? | |
| Aug 6, 2013 at 9:12 | history | asked | travisbartley | CC BY-SA 3.0 |