Re: programmer productivity
- From: "goose" <ruse@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 6 Sep 2006 05:20:40 -0700
Dann Corbit wrote:
"Mark P" <usenet@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:osmLg.24887$gY6.9937@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Years ago I heard a statistic from a reliable source that went something
along the lines of: "The average programmer produces [X] lines of
production quality code per day." That is, taking into account all the
time spent designing, debugging, refactoring, testing, and so on, the net
productivity of a programmer is that much. My recollection is that X was
pretty small, perhaps on the order of 10. Has anyone heard this before
and do you know what the reported value of X is?
11 lines of debugged code per day is at the low end of typical estimates and
20 lines per hour at the high end.
My guess is that the real case will be somewhere between these two extremes
for most projects.
Oh, I don't know about that; you would need to put
in the words "average" and "timeframe" in order
for it to be less meaningless. Even then, I'm not
so sure that LOC would carry much meaning anyway.
While we're on the subject, the high-end and low-end
developer will (all other things being equal) be the
same developer at different points in time. It's
not improbable for a developer to register -X LOC
for a day if they've been cleaning up something
particularly nasty or to register X * 10 LOC
when they've done nothing particularly noteworthy.
At my current work (day-job) it's almost impossible
to actually focus or stay moralised - the conditions
demand that we remain unfocused and that we stay
demoralised, so I get very little done.
examples:
1. I took about 3 months to implement around 2000
lines of C code for a work project recently, with
documentation and testing - 33.33 LOC per day.
2. A little while back, during a weekend, I managed
to write around 3000 lines of C code with documentation
and testing. Mind you, this was a *weekend* and I also
managed to read usenet and slashdot the entire weekend
as well - 3000 LOC per 2 days[1].
A difference of that magnitude gives *some* meaning
to LOC; it tells you that there is a problem[2].
I'm sure my boss at work would be interested in
why I'm so wildly productive when not working under
his rules, although I'm certain he wouldn't like
the answer (so I don't boast about my weekend
achievements at work :-).
[1] Although I was motivated to work until I had
completed what I had in mind and so didn't just
work 8 hours per day for 2 days, but had a coding
marathon that started on friday night and ended
sunday afternoon, with time in between for sleep,
food and hygiene.
[2] To be fair to the first example, I was coding
to someone elses (sometimes) ambiguous spec while in
the second example I had already thought long at
hard about what needed to be done before even starting.
The weekend effort was basically just a braindump.
goose,
luckily, my coworkers (and boss) are clueless
about usenet or else I'd be in trouble for
reading usenet on company time.
.
- References:
- programmer productivity
- From: Mark P
- Re: programmer productivity
- From: Dann Corbit
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