On: The Parable of the Two Programmers (1985)

[patrickmay]

When working on an existing system, I find it's a good sign if your SLOC/day count goes negative for a while.

[dredmorbius → patrickmay]

One contract I had, I dropped the line count of an inherited codebase by 50%. Much of which was necessary to simply be able to run (and debug) it interactively.

It still ran. It ran correctly. It ran faster than previously.

I never quite grasped what it was doing.

The company folded some time after I left it.

[chrisbennet → patrickmay]

That is wisdom...