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by cordite 4023 days ago
My father sent a small comment chain to me as well on a topic like this on one of his blog posts.

<First guy> June 3, 2015 at 10:12 am I think software developers like to impress people with how many lines of code they can write.

<Second guy> June 3, 2015 at 3:31 pm That is not true. A good day is when you leave the office with more powerful software, but fewer lines of code.

<First guy> June 4, 2015 at 4:31 am So why is software always getting bigger ? Is it because the marketing people want to add new features all the time ? Does this even apply to free software like browsers and email clients ?

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Personally, I like writing less code, or reducing code to less code. Less to think about.
3 comments
circlefavshape 4023 days ago
My personal favourite is talking The Business out of things. Solving issues without any coding at all!
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idohealth 4022 days ago
Sure, it is a problem. But if you reboot the server everyday, it will not become a problem.

No coding at all required.

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lucozade 4022 days ago
Many years ago I managed to convince my management that, if they had to use deltaLOC as a performance metric, that they at least use abs(deltaLoC).

I then spent the next year cutting huge chunks of crap out of a C++ application that I had inherited.

Was a most satisfying experience.

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meric 4022 days ago
Hmm, shouldn't it be Sum(abs(deltaLoC per change))? Otherwise if you added 50 lines a day and removed 50, your abs(deltaLoC) will be 0.
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zeckalpha 4022 days ago
Let's add some whitespace to the README. Let's remove some whitespace from the README. Let's add some whitespace to the README.
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jeffreyrogers 4022 days ago
> Does this even apply to free software like browsers and email clients ?

The more I get involved in open source the more I think most code bloat is due to people needing their egos validated by getting a commit into a project, regardless of whether the commit is all that useful or not.

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johnny22 4022 days ago
I've been involved for a long time, and it sure doesn't seem that way to me. Lots of that "code bloat" is simply making things portable across compilers, interpreters, operating systems and languages.
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