Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!bbn!usc!venera.isi.edu!raveling
From: raveling@venera.isi.edu (Paul Raveling)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: software engineers
Message-ID: <8338@venera.isi.edu>
Date: 13 May 89 01:26:39 GMT
References: <4105@ficc.uu.net> <4750@goofy.megatest.UUCP> <8309@venera.isi.edu>
Reply-To: raveling@venera.isi.edu (Paul Raveling)
Organization: Information Sciences Institute, Univ. of So. California
Lines: 42

In article <4750@goofy.megatest.UUCP> djones@megatest.UUCP (Dave Jones) writes:
>From article <4105@ficc.uu.net>, by cliff@ficc.uu.net (cliff click):
>> I've produced 30000 to 35000 lines of code/year for the past 3 years that end 
>> up in income-producing products.
>
>Wow. Fifteen lines an hour, eight hours a day, 250 days a year. Love those
>keyboard macros! :-)

	No keyboard macros required.  My numbers were about the same
	when being project leader, then manager, made me measure them
	for everyone including me.

	For my own numbers, median production of debugged product-quality
	code is around 200-300 lines per day when the day has no meetings
	and the project's learning curve is past history.  Hacking
	takes this up to 700-800 lines per day, but don't expect to
	keep and maintain such a hack.

	To average over time, accounting for documentation, cummunication
	overhead, and such, I'd project 100 lines per day if the
	organization doesn't have a management muddle  (most do).

	An exception is producing MIL-spec code and documentation.
	Using these standards drops my productivity in terms of lines
	of code by a factor of about 3-4.  Doing rigorous module tests
	for MIL-spec work decreases the number of bugs existing at system
	integration by perhaps 5%.  However, for MIL-spec work it may
	be more sensible to measure productivity by pages of documentation
	instead of lines of code.


----------------
Paul Raveling
Raveling@isi.edu



	P.S.:

	If this seems a bit stale, or you're at ISI and it's a duplicate,
	that's because our newsfeed went read-only for a week or two.
	This is a repost of something that I believe didn't get out.