Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!jarthur!uunet!microsoft!jimad
From: jimad@microsoft.UUCP (Jim ADCOCK)
Newsgroups: comp.object
Subject: Re: ada-c++ productivity
Keywords: Looking for a few lazy men
Message-ID: <71438@microsoft.UUCP>
Date: 21 Mar 91 19:59:21 GMT
References: <1991Mar15.224626.27077@aero.org> <1991Mar16.000624.2513@leland.Stanford.EDU> <1991Mar16.205228.4268@grebyn.com> <1991Mar17.142756.25676@ecst.csuchico.edu> <4921@ns-mx.uiowa.edu>
Reply-To: jimad@microsoft.UUCP (Jim ADCOCK)
Organization: Microsoft Corp., Redmond WA
Lines: 20

In article <4921@ns-mx.uiowa.edu> csq031@umaxc.weeg.uiowa.edu () writes:

|Lines of code per day is an absurd measure at best.  Using it in contracts
|is just a way of lulling people who care about such things into thinking
|that programmers (and software companies) know what they're doing and
|that their output is quantifiable.

I used to work for a hardware company [can you say "software-IC"]
where many of the managers thought measuring lines of code per day
were a good idea.  I suggested that they measure the productivity
of their hardware engineers by measuring the number of IC's they 
designed into the digital circuits per day.  "What do you mean",
the managers responded in horror, "we pay our hardware designers to get the
job done with the least amount of ICs possible!"  

They never did figure out the analogy.

Maybe LOC managers could be taught to pay their software engineers
on a "bugs per day" basis -- at least such would make it clear that they're
getting what they pay for.