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

I want to know how to answer this question.

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Work smarter, not harder. –  Marko Aug 8 '10 at 5:10
The answer is Forty-two. –  hobbs Aug 8 '10 at 5:11
The historical answer is "about ten lines of code per day": stackoverflow.com/questions/966800/… 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 8 '10 at 5:11
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closed as not constructive by Matthew Flaschen, Stefan Kendall, Gert Grenander, OMG Ponies, William Pursell Aug 8 '10 at 5:09


4 Answers

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

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As many as he or she should.

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Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight. -- Bill Gates –  Jake Petroules Aug 8 '10 at 5:09
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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.

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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 8 '10 at 5:09
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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...

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