Line counts are something that bean counters that do not understand software or rather quality software, use as a metric to determine how efficient their programmers are. I could quite easily pump out 1000 lines of crap code per day, and then have to change half of them 3 times and remove 30% to get to a predetermined level of quality, or I can average 1/4 of that, and produce code that has the requested level of quality from the start. Depending on the size of the project I may not code anything for days or weeks, while working through the design. Frequently the well thought out design has fewer lines of code and also has a higher level of quality (fewer lines of code usually means fewer chances to make a mistake).

However, to really answer your question, if some bean counter does ask for such a metric, I usually just give them a wc -l, or possibly, if I'm trying to make them think I've put some real work into the number, I have a script that does a glorified wc -l, but has an impressive name, and a hideous number of comand line switches and 'thinks' about the result for about 45 seconds to a minute, and then prints its result.


In reply to Re: Line-counts of perl programs/modules by ftforger
in thread Line-counts of perl programs/modules by Tarka

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":



  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.