[lancekrogers]

Why COCOMO?

I wanted a repeatable way to quantify the productivity jump I’m getting from Claude Code (and to compare it with other AI tools I’m testing). The line-counter scc prints COCOMO “organic” estimates by default; at first the dollar figures looked crazy, so I benchmarked them against a few past codebases where I know the head-count, timeline, and budget. They were surprisingly close, so I’m using COCOMO here as a rough yard-stick—not as a claim that LOC directly equals business value.

If nothing else, it gives engineers a concrete number to show when asking a boss to cover an AI subscription, or founders a way to justify “impossible” timelines to investors.

TLDR: Claude Code let me ship 219k high quality LOC in 7 weeks across eight projects, while juggling multiple distinct projects in parallel.