LOC is quite ok... [LWN.net]

LOC is quite ok...

Posted Feb 21, 2007 21:25 UTC (Wed) by nettings (subscriber, #429)
In reply to: Who wrote 2.6.20? by pr1268
Parent article: Who wrote 2.6.20?

"Using lines of code as a metric is pure evil. "

wrong. absolute lines-of-code counts are certainly bogus as a measure for productivity, but the purpose of this article was to find a relative measure of where commits come from.
unless you can demonstrate that corporate-backed hackers produce a significantly different amount of functionality or utility per line of code (which would introduce a systemic error), the method is perfectly valid, because the inherent bogosity of LOC measurements will level out.

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LOC is quite ok...

Posted Mar 3, 2007 17:36 UTC (Sat) by jzbiciak (✭ supporter ✭, #5246) [Link]

Also, LOC is only meaningful if the output of the measurement isn't an input into future productivity. If coders are incentivized by their KLOC numbers (either directly, such as through wages and promotions, or indirectly through ego boosting), then KLOC can quickly become meaningless.