Linus from LTT asks Linus if he’d ever heard of software developers being terminated based on how many lines of code they’d written .
Linus Torvalds responds “Anyone who thinks that’s a valid metric is too stupid to work at a tech company…”
It’s clear Torvalds doesn’t know who this is about when questioned.
Linus hints to him it’s about Musk.
“Apparently I was spot on [about Elon Musk being such and individual who is too stupid to work at a tech company].”
I’m not even a computer guy, but even I can see how just using the number of lines of code as a metric would be an extremely stupid method for determining effectiveness. Quality should ALWAYS rule over Quantity, but billionaires are obsessively into quantity, to an extremely unhealthy degree (it’s a mental illness, OCD, hoarding, etc.), that’s how they become billionaires.
I’m going to set my terminal width to 1 character. That way my “lines” of code count goes way up.
That’s the kind of thinking that a Sociopathic Oligarch could get behind, which is entirely the problem. Gaming and/or hacking the system is preferable to doing things properly. They want to be “disruptive,” even when it’s ill-advised.
Imagine trying to read that tho. Suddenly English is formatted vertically.
Isn’t some of Japanese writing vertical? Might help me learn.
Yeah, Japanese is written right to left, top to bottom. Traditionally, at least.
Here’s a very simple example.
What’s 3^3?
Or,
Well it’s 3x3x3
Which is 3+3+3, 3 times.
Which is 3+3+3+3+3+3+3+3+3, which is 27.
Which solution do we prefer?
3^3 = 27?
Or
3+3+3
+3+3+3
+3+3+3
=27?
Which one uses more lines?
I prefer 1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1.
var three1 = 3
var three2 = three1
…
Repeat until 27.
LOC is a terrible metric. The worst programmer I ever had work for me had the highest LOC of anyone on the team, and his code was crap that barely worked.
Is this why so many of these fuckheads are keen on LLMs? They’re great at vomiting out reams of code.
With emojis in it for extra flair!
In my project there has been this guy who produced more lines of code than most other. All of his code is a terribly convoluted mess no one can work with. Also buggy and slow as hell. It’s been many years since he left the company, and the negative effects are still seen today.
Luckily we’ve been able to detach ourselves from the worst parts.
It reminds me of the quote, “if I had more time I would have written you a shorter letter”. Terse code is often better, because it is often developed using a process that only adds necessary things or was created by trial and error during the development process that isn’t included in the final output.
Lengthy code is often written because a person coded their misunderstandings, their ambiguities about the problem space, and their early failures at solving the problem into the code.
True. However, in this case I believe this guy just had a weird admiration for complexity.
Takes me back to highscool assignments where a few very keen people would submit like 100 page projects and then ask how long mine was and I’d say 13 pages. They’d look all smug and make comments about how I wouldn’t get a good mark but guess what: I covered all the points in the marking scheme with sufficent detail, while they rambled off topic and repeated themselves. Nobody wants to read in ten pages something that can be adequetely described in one.
I look forward to X, Tesla, and SpaceX switching to Windows (and permanently fucking off)
Yep, Grok is probably already working on it, or at least getting people excited about it…
I love folklore.org. A long time ago when I was a lowly junior engineer, I read that story about Burrelll Smith and the mustache. So I grew a beard and got a promotion and raise the next week. Had a beard ever since.
I’ve never had to code professionally, but even on my personal projects, I don’t want a single extra line in the program that doesn’t need to be there and I should be able to understand the purpose of every line years later.
My eyes glaze over whenever I look at corporate code because there are so many moving parts at that scale all from different qualities of programming.
I don’t know if this is a practical thought, but I really wish we could get away from every project being monstrously sized. I prefer small packaged ideas similar to terminal commands. Just because it has a GUI doesn’t mean you need to design every piece of software as if I’m going to spend a day in it. Just give me small, purpose-built tools I can understand and then stop eternally developing and adding features.
To add to this, it seems that every company now either makes one piece of software or 36 different softwares. If they make one piece of software, they endlessly pack it with features people don’t want and if they’re the latter, every piece of software is a hastily-cobbled-together half idea and they just move onto another piece of software. Is there really not a middle ground here?
That’s the result of product managers, project leads etc constantly thinking users need stuff, maybe trying to beat their competition, etc. I have watched a few products get bloated with the aim of beating their competition not providing user value.
The really disgusting part is that actually works (if you’re primarily selling to other corporations). Most of the most popular pieces of corporate software have the common trait that they do tons of stuff really poorly and nothing well. They get picked by the bean counters because the bean counters don’t care that it’s a fucking trash fire of a UI, they’re just looking at the list of other software they can remove because this new software does the same job significantly worse. That or they’re just mesmerized by the giant fucking bullet point list of “features”.
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