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by mcmcmc20 hours ago |
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upvoteby 19 hours ago|
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upvoteby embedding-shape19 hours ago|
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> 2000 lines is 10x more time consuming to review than 200

Very far from the truth in practice, every line of code isn't as difficult/easy to review as the other.

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upvoteby jimbokun18 hours ago|
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But why would the lines in the 2000 case be easier to review per line?
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upvoteby squeaky-clean6 hours ago|
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Which of these programs is easier to review

  {x{x,sum -2#x}/0 1}
or

  def f(n):
      if n <= 1:
          return n
      else:
          return f(n-1) + f(n-2)
They're both the same program
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upvoteby mcmcmc18 hours ago|
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Holy shit, read the words I wrote. Ceteris Paribus. Assume the 200 lines and 2000 lines have a similar distribution of complexity.
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upvoteby badc0ffee14 hours ago|
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Romanes eunt domus
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upvoteby 18 hours ago|
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upvoteby jazzypants19 hours ago|
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The point is that LOC is never a good metric for any aspect of determining the quality of code or the coder because it ignores the nuance of reality. It's impossible to generalize because the code can be either deceptively dense or unnecessarily bloated. The only thing that actually matters is whether the business objective is achieved without any unintended side effects.
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upvoteby mcmcmc19 hours ago|
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> The only thing that actually matters is whether the business objective is achieved without any unintended side effects.

Objectives change; timeliness matters. The speed at which you deliver value is incredibly important, which is why it matters to measure your process. Deceptively dense is what I’d call software engineers who can’t accept that the process is actually generalizable to a degree and that lines of code are one of the few tangible things that can be used as a metric. Can you deliver value without lines of code?

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upvoteby jazzypants19 hours ago|
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> Objectives change; timeliness matters. The speed at which you deliver value is incredibly important, which is why it matters to measure your process.

This assumes that shorter code is faster to write. To quote Blaise Pascal, "I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time."

> Can you deliver value without lines of code?

No, but you can also depreciate value when you stuff a codebase full of bloated, bug-ridden code that no man or machine can hope to understand.

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upvoteby mcmcmc18 hours ago|
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You seem determined to misinterpret. I’m not talking about LOC as a measure of productivity. The ratio of LOC needing review to the capacity of reviewers (using how many LOC can be read/reviewed over the sampling period) is what’s being discussed. Agentic AI/vibe coding has caused that ratio to increase and shows a bottleneck in the SDLC. It’s a proxy metric, get over yourself.

“All models are wrong, some are useful”. What’s not useful is constantly bitching about how there’s no way to measure your work outside of the binary “is it done” every time process efficiency is brought up.

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upvoteby jazzypants17 hours ago|
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Yes, reading this back, I definitely veered off-topic. I apologize. I still don't think that you can say how much time it will take to review code based on how many lines of code are involved, but my argument was not well crafted. I just hope that others can learn something from our discussion. Thank you for being patient with me, and I hope you have a good day! :)
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