> The SWE industry is eagerly awaiting your proposed accurate metric.
There are none. All are various variant of bad. LoC is probably the worst metric of all. Because it says nothing about quality, or features, or number of products shipped. It's also the easiest metric to game. Just write GoF-style Java, and you're off to the races. Don't forget to have a source code license at the beginning of every file. Boom. LoC.
The only metrics that barely work are:
- features delivered per unit of time. Requires an actual plan for the product, and an understanding that some features will inevitably take a long time
- number of bugs delivered per unit of time. This one is somewhat inversely correlated with LoC and features, by the way: the fewer lines of code and/or features, the fewer bugs
- number of bugs fixed per unit of time. The faster bugs are fixed the better
There are none. All are various variant of bad. LoC is probably the worst metric of all. Because it says nothing about quality, or features, or number of products shipped. It's also the easiest metric to game. Just write GoF-style Java, and you're off to the races. Don't forget to have a source code license at the beginning of every file. Boom. LoC.
The only metrics that barely work are:
- features delivered per unit of time. Requires an actual plan for the product, and an understanding that some features will inevitably take a long time
- number of bugs delivered per unit of time. This one is somewhat inversely correlated with LoC and features, by the way: the fewer lines of code and/or features, the fewer bugs
- number of bugs fixed per unit of time. The faster bugs are fixed the better
None of the other bullshit works.