Are lines-of-code (LOC) a useful productivity measure?
Date: 27 Oct 1994 (see also the archives) Not unless you are very careful. Capers Jones’ book has a detailed and insightful discussion of Lines of Code, including anomalies, and shows how to use it sensibly (eg in a single job shop, with a single language, and a standard company coding style). It is easy to cook up anomalies where LOC gives different numbers for code written in different styles, but pathological cases should get caught in code inspections.
