How many lines-of-code does a developer write (life time)?

[OriginalGriff]

Are we talking "lines of code" or "original lines of code"? Because I'm pretty sure most of the modern stuff is just copy'n'patse from SO, QA, the back of a cereal packet ...

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[Joan M]

42

[CPallini]

Another interesting question would be: "how many lines of code does a developer delete (life time)?".

[musefan]

None... that's what comment blocks are for! :-D

[maze3]

What of the velocity of lines of code written over time. Early on, you might write lots of lines of code. say 1000 lines. push to release. sum = 1000 But 200 of which is bad. So rewrite those. RELEASE! sum = 1200 Then you refactor. cutting out 400 lines. Release is now 600 lines. RELEASE! sum = 1200 + 300 (not 400 as rewrote some multi lines as singular lines) = 1500 Project 2. Very Similar to Project 1. But know you know mistakes. And some extra feature. Same amount of time. 600 lines. RELEASE. sum= 2100 Year 1. 1500 lines. Year 2. 600 lines. Then you build a library of reusable stubs, which you reuse. Released lines of new code I would say goes down. Maybe some increases when figuring out a new language. Oh, but released lines of code would tend to increase. Because that library of support code you use to reduce the amount of new lines you need to write, will increase and bloated to cover the odd and weird corner cases it needs to satisfy.

[musefan]

sum = impossible to know how many It's a silly question to be honest. With your examples, plus any IDE (or other tools) auto generating code, where do you even begin to start counting... (well, I guess technically you start counting at 1)

[Maximilien]

stupid metric. I don't write effective (wrong word here) line of code that often, most of the time it is generic boilerplate code to make those those effective line of code work.

I'd rather be phishing!

[Lost User]

write lines of code??? why? post question to CP/SO, wait for replies (check for flames on newbie answers) cut paste ZERO lines of code written.

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[Richard Deeming]

How about keystrokes? :) Keys Left - You have a finite number of keystrokes left in your hands before you die. How many is that?[^]

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"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined." - Homer

[Power Puff Boy]

Not an answer to the question, just a thought... Image you could estimate the lines of code an average developer writes in a lifetime and you could also estimate the lines of code you have already written. Then you could calculate the lines of code you would need to write until you die.

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[PeejayAdams]

That's awesome! I rather suspect that Lee Child, Bernard Cornwell and a fair few others have used up all of theirs by now but their novels keep coming on a daily basis, so I guess they must be using voice recognition software.

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. - Mark Twain

[musefan]

Power Puff Boy wrote:

Then you could calculate the lines of code you would need to write until you die.

Or perhaps you mean you could calculate how many more lines of code it will take until you drop dead... X|

[CPallini]

That would make my code a colossal collection of comments. :laugh:

[raddevus]

OriginalGriff wrote:

Are we talking "lines of code" or "original lines of code"?

Original? As you said, there's no original code now. Just the stuff we keep copying and pasting. I think all the copying started back in K&R C and then Petzold Programming Windows. After that, once it got onto the Internet it's all just copy code. All code can be directly traced back to those two sources. :laugh:

[MarkTJohnson]

Reacher said nothing.

[Amarnath S]

I've heard that about thirty years back (when C was more dominant), some managers used to have tools to count the number of semicolons, each semicolon signifying a line as productivity tools. So, some developers used to have lines as ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; which is as many lines of code.

[honey the codewitch]

let's see. I've written about 10,000 lines this week (strangely enough, I've been counting, and working on a single project so it's easy) gosh. im my life? I've been coding for about 32 years I type faster these days, and have a lot of time to do it these days. and I can crank out what, 520,000 lines a year if I apply myself. *32 years = 16,640,000 lines of code. we'll halve it. 8,320,000 so far. i've probably got another 10 million in me.

When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.

[honey the codewitch]

lol

When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.

[honey the codewitch]

for loops counts as 3 lines. glad i barely use linq. LOL

When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.

[honey the codewitch]

i've got a whole routine i cut and pasted from stackoverflow in my project. (it just prints an ascii tree of some data, but still THE SHAME!)

When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.