Comment by vb-8448
2 days ago
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.
> it’s simply not humanly possible to keep up
Are you talking about manual review? Of course it isn’t possible to read that much, I never said it was. The scale of changes requires new approaches to engineering. Some may feel these processes are less rigorous, but in my opinion, when done well, they’re actually more.
I have worked in many codebases using coding agents. Sometimes their changes are large and sometimes they’re small. The better repos have many guardrails to keep the PRs small. I’m not sure why you’d assume why my or your experience working with them would be even remotely similar to working with them at Anthropic though. I think it’s just fine to say you don’t know. They have no obligation to appease to people debating in an HN thread.
I think in general you’re going to continue to struggle to translate your one-off experiences to these 1000x 10000x scales. Most people can’t fathom scaling anything beyond 10-100x.