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On average, how many lines of code should a developer write per day?

I want to know how to answer this question.

James
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ram
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    Work smarter, not harder. – Marko Aug 08 '10 at 05:10
  • The historical answer is "about ten lines of code per day": http://stackoverflow.com/questions/966800/mythical-man-month-10-lines-per-developer-day-how-close-on-large-projects I've even heard that those ten lines of code are roughly constant no matter _which_ programming language you're using -- good high-level ones vs extremely low-level ones, functional or procedural, object oriented or not. – sarnold Aug 08 '10 at 05:11
  • Also see http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/103807/what-is-negative-code – Pacerier Apr 15 '15 at 01:35

4 Answers4

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LoC is not an accurate way to describe productivity. It doesn't take into account how much work has been done, just how much your codebase has bloated. http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Negative_2000_Lines_Of_Code.txt

Matt Williamson
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Some days you'll net none, other days you may net a few hundred. Depends heavily on the project, and the people involved.

jer
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  • Since I use the headfirst strategy in web development, its usually a day of writing tons of code, and a day of debugging with little lines of code – TheLQ Aug 08 '10 at 05:09
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As many as he or she should.

Stefan Kendall
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That depends on so many factors it's impossible to give a general answer. Plus, how do you define "should"? Lines of code are also a poor measure of progress anyways...

Jake Petroules
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