[userbinator]

Exceptions like C++ templates exist (in which a small amount of source can expand to a huge binary), but usually there tends to be a general correlation between the size of the source and the binary.

Trying to write as little source code as possible also leads to trying to find the simplest, most concise algorithm to do a particular task, and that also has effects on the binary size.

[adsr]

This isn't C++. Just adding whitespace, descriptive variable and function names and comments wouldn't add any size to the resulting binary since the code is semantically the same. Using library functions can keep your amount of lines low, but you get that back when at link time if you do static linking at least. Wouldn't you prefer maintainable code that people can easily understand. I just want this said since obfuscated minimal C code isn't the same as minified JS.

Algorithms is an interesting case since you have to ask if you are optimizing for size or speed, as an example you can implement a linear search in fewer lines of code than binary search. Does that mean that linear search is a better more optimized choice. It does if you are optimizing for small executable binary size.