Comment by cush
2 days ago
30k PRs is such a meaningless figure though, you can't make anything of it. It entirely depends what's living in that repo. Adding localized strings, configs, things that change frequently, can easily move numbers like this by orders of magnitude. How big are the PRs? Maybe there's an auto-bug-fixer agent that runs around the codebase making thousands of single-line fixes per day. Who knows. The number means nothing in isolation. We used to scoff at bad managers for measuring the performance of engineers using lines of code, now we're using the same figures to judge AI. We've become the bad managers.
Actually LOC is a decent measurement, it becomes a bad measurement when you use it in the wrong way, like any other measurement.
Agree that 30k PR alone doesn't mean much, but there aren't other details on what's inside. Based on I saw on how LLM programming works, it's hard to believe that there are single-line fixes. If I have to bet I'd bet on 200 LOC on average, that is 6M/day. Even if only a small portion reach production, it's still insane.
It’s kind of ironic how your comment starts with “LOC is a decent measurement” with zero explanation, then quickly devolves into rough estimates, assumptions, and finishing with “6M/day… it’s still insane”
You’re proving precisely what I’m saying. You don’t have any real information and your guess is as good as mine. It’s just as plausible to assume Anthropic runs 50x experiments for every feature they ship and only 2% of the code hits production. It’s just as plausible to assume half or more of their repo is tests. It’s just as plausible to assume there’s as much comments, skills, docs, and context engineering as there is code. It’s just as plausible to assume that there’s 10x more configs, localized strings, and content as there is executable code.
If you add all my assumptions together that leaves us with about 15x PRs worth of shipped executable code. And even with your generous 200 LoC per PR, it’s only 3000 Lines per day. Now that’s insane!
You’re right, mine are assumptions are just as much assumptions as yours.
However, if you’ve worked with coding agents and seen repositories that were mostly vibecoded, you’ve probably also seen how complex they became in a very short time. Even the estimate of 200 LOC per PR was conservative, actual number is very likely much higher.
In any case, even if a large portion of those lines were documentation, tests, or comments, those count as LOC too, and it’s simply not humanly possible to keep up.
PS: They could simply release more data and stop the debate, but for some reason, they don’t.
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