Use of LOC to determine project size

language-agnostic code-metrics lines-of-code
user34537 picture user34537 · Jun 3, 2009 · Viewed 10.2k times · Source

How many lines of code (LOC) does it take to be considered a large project? How about for just one person writing it?

I know this metric is questionable, but there is a significant difference, for a single developer, between 1k and 10k LOC. I typically use space for readability, especially for SQL statements, and I try to reduce the amount of LOC for maintenance purpose to follow as many best practice as i can.

For example, I created a unified diff of the code I modified today, and it was over 1k LOC (including comments and blank lines). Is "modified LOC" a better metric? I have ~2k LOC, so it's surprising I modified 1k. I guess rewriting counts as both a deletion and addition which doubles the stats.

Answer

shoosh picture shoosh · Jun 3, 2009

A slightly less useless metric - time of compilation.
If your project takes more than... say, 30 minutes to compile, it's large :)

Related questions

What and where are the stack and heap?

Programming language books explain that value types are created on the stack, and reference types are created on the heap, without explaining what these two things are. I haven't read a clear explanation of this. I understand what a stack …

Read More
What is dependency injection?

There have been several questions already posted with specific questions about dependency injection, such as when to use it and what frameworks are there for it. However, What is dependency injection and when/why should or shouldn't it be used?

Read More
Regex to match only letters

How can I write a regex that matches only letters?

Read More