Comment by stocknoob
5 years ago
"My point today is that, if we wish to count lines of code, we should not regard them as “lines produced” but as “lines spent”: the current conventional wisdom is so foolish as to book that count on the wrong side of the ledger." -E. Dijkstra
I prefer the Gates version. Dijkstra's implicit premise rather naively assumes that it is somehow less expensive to produce fewer lines of code. It's arguably such an absolute statement that it subtly encourages people to engage in undesirable behaviors such as playing code golf at work.
Gates's, on the other hand, accurately captures the reality: while, all else being equal, a lighter-weight design is preferable to a heavier one, it takes some skill and effort to actually produce the lighter design. Which leaves open the possibility that doing so may not actually be worth the effort.
The relevant metric isn't lines but concepts: Which code does it in the fewest new ideas? Generally, that's the best, where "new ideas" would be ideas new to a domain expert. For example, in a video game, each of the specific monster types is an idea someone who is an expert in that game would know. The ideas in the memory management code are new. You can't remove all code relevant to a specific monster without removing that monster, at which point you're no longer implementing the same game, but slimming down the number of new concepts in the memory management code is not directly relevant to gameplay.
In short: Make program logic similar to business logic.
I'd expect nothing less wise from Dijkstra. I feel like every week I learn something new from that man.