LOC Industry Average

[abhijit]

Hi Folks,
There is lot of talk about loc and industry averages in my shop.

I wonder if there is some kind publication which publishes these averages. For example, the average LOC for PL/SQL per day is 15.

Is this a fact or some kind of hogwash being stuffed down our throats?
Abhijit

[hellswraith]

By LOC, what are you talking about? Lines Of Code?

If that is what you are refering to, 15 is what I do in less than 10 minutes.

[abhijit]

Yes I mean lines of code. The industry average is supposed to signify how much of code goes into production. So basically its not your typing speed that we are talking about.


Lets say you receive a java assignment where you have to dish out a class which reads / writes ini files. You understand the task, put some code that works. Debug / Test and then code some more. So at the end of one week, you have about 200 lines of code which form a class. Then then calculate the average 200 / 5 which comes to 40. So 40 LOC is your average for the day. Maybe someone can put all those 200 lines in one day and finish off the assignment to perfection. In that case his average would be 200. Highly unlikely IMHO.


However my question is is there any publication which publishes this average?

Abhijit

[abhijit]

Originally posted by NoteMe
The SQL are standarised...but there is no databse that is supporting it 100%. Think it is an ISO standard...not sure tho'

I am sorry, but I did not understand why you have to have this comment in. I specifically quoted PL/SQL as an example.

-Abhijit

[hellswraith]

Originally posted by abhijit
Yes I mean lines of code. The industry average is supposed to signify how much of code goes into production. So basically its not your typing speed that we are talking about.


Lets say you receive a java assignment where you have to dish out a class which reads / writes ini files. You understand the task, put some code that works. Debug / Test and then code some more. So at the end of one week, you have about 200 lines of code which form a class. Then then calculate the average 200 / 5 which comes to 40. So 40 LOC is your average for the day. Maybe someone can put all those 200 lines in one day and finish off the assignment to perfection. In that case his average would be 200. Highly unlikely IMHO.


However my question is is there any publication which publishes this average?

OK, first, I do about 100-200 SOLID lines of code a day, so that isn't highly unlikely. (yes, I do this for a job day in and day out, and sometimes I produce way more than that) In fact, if I only produced 15 lines of code a day, I would be fired. You can NEVER get a project done with that rate unless you have 10 programmers doing the work I do alone for the same amount of money. Hmmm.

As far as where to find this, I haven't been able to locate a publication. I have asked other more experience developers in the industry via email and such, and they said 200 a day is about average from their perspective.

If you find a resource please post it.

[abhijit]

Originally posted by hellswraith
OK, first, I do about 100-200 SOLID lines of code a day, so that isn't highly unlikely. (yes, I do this for a job day in and day out, and sometimes I produce way more than that) In fact, if I only produced 15 lines of code a day, I would be fired. You can NEVER get a project done with that rate unless you have 10 programmers doing the work I do alone for the same amount of money. Hmmm.

As far as where to find this, I haven't been able to locate a publication. I have asked other more experience developers in the industry via email and such, and they said 200 a day is about average from their perspective.

If you find a resource please post it.

I am unable to find a resource either. If you are saying that its 200 lines a day. I find that difficult to take that.

Do you count the days required for analysis / testing etc? I am counting all these days towards that 15 lines of code a day. I am trying to find a publication as well.

Abhijit

[hellswraith]

Lets look at this.

We have a 10,000 lines of code application....(which, for the sake of the argument, we will say it takes a YEAR to complete including analysis and coding, etc. This is a seriously a big problem if an app that size takes that long, but we will use that anyway)

That is 365 days a year, minus weekends and holidays is around 265 (again, higher than it really is, but we will stick with highball estimates).

Ok, so now spread out those 10,000 lines accross the 265 and you are looking at 38 lines of code a day. So this more than doubles your estimate. This is including analysis and design, development, testing, etc. This is a VERY conservitive estimate.

My last 10,000+ line project was turned around from analysis to implementation in only 4 months. That puts it at around 120 lines of code a day. That is a realistic number because I just did it. The example before this was just a demonstration about how low your number is.

Here is the other problem with your thinking. Assuming you have someone doing analysis, someone else coding, and others doing testing and implementation, all at the same time, your lines of code a day actually gets increased if everyone is proficient with their jobs. This is because the developer doesn't switch roles, so their coding stays in tip top shape, the analysis guys can stay in that mode of thinking, and the testers and implementors the same. Therefor each group is more productive than if one person did all roles. So my 120 lines a day for me could have turned into 140 lines a day per person in the app dev life cycle and increased productivity (assuming, of course, that I had those people and they were proficient).




Now, here is another thing to consider. Imagine I have two coders. One codes at 500 lines a day. The other does 250. The one that does 500 lines of day produces more bugs, but not twice the amount of the 250 line coder. Who is more efficient? Add in another guy that does 100 lines of coding that is almost error free, but he also makes better reuse of his and others components therfor getting the effectiveness of 300 lines of code a day. This trying to figure out lines of code per day is a bunch of figurative numbers....and what does it get you? Are you going to use that to estimate an development life cycle? No, because you would have to know exactly how many lines of code it takes to do something. You would also need to know how much code is already coded and you don't have to do it again, etc....