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Development speed is not a bottleneck

(pawelbrodzinski.substack.com)
191 points flail | 1 comments | 05 Sep 25 13:13 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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goalieca ◴[05 Sep 25 13:51 UTC] No.45138593[source]▶
Development is always a bottleneck. Writing lines of code usually isn’t. I end up pumping out more leetcode during an interview than I do during a week or two on real products. No one has meaningfully measured lines of code as a metric of productivity since my career began in the mid-2000.
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khazhoux ◴[05 Sep 25 17:25 UTC] No.45141106[source]▶
On the other hand, there’s tons of people here on HN who will claim that there’s zero connection between lines of code written and developer productivity. Obviously, deleting bad/unused code is good. And obviously, some tricky bugs are fixed in one line. But you can’t build something new without some (usually, very many) lines of code.

No code -> no software.

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goalieca ◴[05 Sep 25 19:09 UTC] No.45142409[source]▶
What would be the function mapping lines of code to "value" look like. Most agile teams aim to deliver "value" these days. We can't put a number of value. We most certainly can't say on average that adding a single line of code adds 0.01 units of value for a certain project.
replies(1): >>45144359 #
1. khazhoux ◴[05 Sep 25 22:24 UTC] No.45144359{3}[source]▶
> We most certainly can't say on average that adding a single line of code adds 0.01 units of value for

Certainly there’s no simple F(num_lines_changed) value function. There are many other parameters. But to suggest, as many here somehow do, that lines of code touched is independent to effective development, is plain ludicrous.