How much does software cost per line?

[jcottrell]

I'm just trying to do some crude budgeting. Does anyone know of a figure to use to estimate the cost of developing an application program in a language such as Vb or Java based on the number of lines of code? My calc just need to include the prgrammer's salary and some minor overhead. Are such metrics ever used and are they accurate? (I have no idea if it's supposed to be $1/line, $10/line, $100/line.)

Just curiou$...

[Behemoth]

thats a rather distorted way of approaching it. different programmers with different styles will write differently - often a shorter programis more efficient. If a programmer knew he was paid by line, he could add reams of comments to bulk up his pay packet.

a better way is to work to a quote for the job that needs doing. Either that or charge per hour.

[Arbiter]

The most common way of estimating costs is in manhours.

e.g. you have 3 staff working for 1 day on it = ( 3 * 7.5 ) = 22.5 man hours

Then, you apply your hourly rate to that...

[Si_the_geek]

I have heard of people many years ago getting paid per (non-comment/whitespace) line, but obviously it is REALLY simple to add many more lines of code with very little extra time, eg:

If x = 1 Then Msgbox "X is 1!", vbInformation, "What is X?"

Can also be written as:

If x = 1 Then 
  Msgbox "X is 1!", _
               vbInformation, _
                "What is X?"
End If

..which is a style some people use anyway for ease of reading, but as you can see 1 line becomes 5 - and it only takes a few more seconds to do! If you were paid by line it would be easy to do this all over the place, and easily earn 3 times as much!

[ChuckB]

Hi,
I read this with interest. It has been a long time since a programmer has been paid by the lines in his/her code. Here is what I do for a customer

I estimate the following.

1) How long will it take to write the program. Say 60 hours.
2) How long will it take to write the documentation to support the program so employees will be able to teach themselves/others how to use the software. Say 16 hours.
3) How long to train employees initially to use the software. Say 4 hours.

So, at $50/hr that is 50 x ( 60 + 16 + 4).

Now, that is my maximum charge. If it takes me 100 hours then I eat it out of pocket.

Your budget will depend upon getting a realistic and honest answer from a programmer regarding this estimate. We tend to pad the hours in case we have 'over estimated' our ability. ;-)

Regards,

[J Staniforth]

There is an advanced means of estimating the cost of software projects. Basically it involves determining the number of functional points in an application, two programs of equal length may be vastly different in complexity.
Then a table of values is used which has been drawn up after much research which attempts to reflect the difficulty of the programming language, the nature of the application and the experience of the programmer.
From all this an estimate of the overall time is determined and multiplied by the programmers cost per hour.
I hope this at least helps to give you pointers of things to consider and build into your own estimates.

[snakeeyes1000]

manhours. When I do free-lance work for companies, They give me a project description, I give them an estimate based on the complexity, tediousness, and level of skill required. If I am the only programmer in 100 square miles who can get it done in 24 hours, my estimate will reflect that.

[Warmaster199]

Wow... I wish I could get paid per line... My OS currently has about 140,000lines of C Code and it still isn't operational... Imagine, $1/line and I would already have our mortgage paid off... $10/line and I would start my company(But I'm only 17)... $100/line - start my company and save the other 9/10 ths...

...But no. It is definitely not done like that. I have to agree with the otehr people here, it's done my manhours. In order to make a profit, you have to sell your program at a price higher than what it cost to create it (Naturally). When figuring out the price, you need to take into account the amount of people, what their pay is, the documentation needed, maybe take into account the cost of the equipment needed, the operating expenses of the business, and then start from there.

[J Staniforth]

I wonder whether J Cottrell was originally trying to determine costs internally to a company writing its own software, or whether he meant to present a price estimate to a client?

[jcottrell]

J Cottrell is trying to determine whether to purchase source code written by an external party or to develop it in house. I'm free to view the source and it's reasonably clean and well written. I'm looking for a good way to determine if what the third party is asking for is reasonable or not.

John

[ChuckB]

Hi John,
Custom software for one customer is always more expensive than buying software from a vendor who has sold 1 million copies (exception being Microsoft... :-)

I know of one customer of mine paid $5K for a Visual Basic program that merged data from three databases to support scheduling jobs for 10 technicians and generating bonds and letters using Word.

In reduced man-hours doing the task manually, billing mistakes caught by the software and forgotten appointments by humans, they reported that the software paid for itself in 4 months. That was two years ago and the software is still at 100%.

So, if you can save $2000/yr and the software costs $1000 then it seems like a good price. However, if your programmer can write the same program in 3 hours....then the choice is obvious.

So, consideration for how long it will take for your company/business to recoup costs should be an important factor.

Choosing to write software in-house usually pays off in the long-run in terms of technical support for correcting software bugs and conducting software training. Is the 3rd party support inexpensive/available? On the other hand, will your inhouse programmer(s) still be around in a year to provide support...or will they go else where and then charge you vendor costs ($50 to $200/hr) to come back to their former employer to provide the support?

Hope this is helpful.
Regards,
ChuckB

[Megistal]

Like J Staniforth said, the functions points are one way to calculate the number of lines a program (and then the cost will eventually flow from that metrics).

But functions points are not the only metrics that can do this. There's model like Cocomo, Cocomo II (the 3 subcategorys in that field), putnam function that does the same as the functions points.

When I saids the SAME, we must understand that they TRYING to evaluate the number of lines of the software to develop. Trying because software engineering is at it's child state now. We are unable to predict with a reasonable pourcentage of error what will be the size of the software we want to develop.

Theses metrics can give you a small idea of the size of a project. So experience is still very important now, but metrics shall comes (I hope!)

Last thing because I could talk for hours on that subject. On average, with java, it turn around 34 / lines of code per day (if a remember well). Not that much you will say, I understand what you think. But a project contain 6 parts, Getting the info, conception, coding, testing, deploying, and after the upkeeping until it's death.

So the coding aspect is only a small portion of a project.

Finally, finally, try to estimate the length of the project on the 5 first parts of it and then you can begin thinking of money.
I don't want to disappoint you but no one is able to give you an accurate answer for now. Actuals software engineering tools are unable to give you that information.

Hope I light up a bit on a dark subject.