I sincerely don't get the obsession about "X lines of code".
I mean, once I joined a project where the first thing they told me to explain the size/reach of the project was that it was about 5 MLoCs. They said it with a sense of achievement, like "This is a lot; we've done something big here". It later turned out that their numbers were quite old and the project was about 8 MLoCs. But what nobody said... what they didn't even want to acknowledge is that the code was a horrible mess where copy&pasting had gone rampant and unsupervised for years.
If the code had been cleaned and well kept, the actual significant size may have been probably something like 1 or 2 MLoCs, at most. Yes, a big project, but still quite the difference.
But then again... "something in 10 lines of JS"... is like, hey, whatever, just put it all in a single line if that's your goal. I mean, the code is almost as horrible at 10 lines as it is at 1 line, so if your goal is the number of lines of code...
I know, I know, "this is fun code". But, really, what is even fun about this code? Does it at least show or teach some "fun tricks" or anything clever, interesting, peculiar? Not really. It's just about writing some bad code in a specific number of lines.
The "10 lines" is so random and pointless that it even resorts to removing some newlines but not others to make it fit exactly 10. It feels silly.
So, to anyone reading this kind of article, I'd like to say: Please, ignore anyone who talks about the number of lines of their code. By itself, whether small or big that number means shit nothing. Instead, focus on writing good, clear, expressive code. And then, the fact that they mention the number as something relevant most probably means the quality of the code is pretty bad.
kali 802 days ago. link 1 point ▲ ▼