In a famous scene with John Hammond and Nedry, Nedry says that he is the only one who can debug 2 million lines of code. So after that scene and with my frustration I googled and some websites say that 2 million lines of code is equal to the Windows 3.1 operating system made with 2.5 Million lines of code approximately.


So is it possible that only one person can code/debug 2 million lines of code, and considering that the "Park" needed to be open to get some income profits, and to pay the investors?

Scene: https://twitter.com/jurassicworld/status/870729372113686529?lang=en

Information: https://informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/million-lines-of-code/

Please consider the age of the character in that scene and many things like weekend time, holidays, family time and if the "character" became temporarily sick and etc. A few minutes after that, John Hammond told Alan Grant in the Travel Trailers that Nedry is conspiring with another character (Lewis Dodgson) so that time is not for "coding or work" or production related, so please consider that time like in the examples above.

closed as off-topic by Paulie_D, TheLethalCarrot, Meat Trademark, Vishwa, J M Nov 16 '18 at 4:03


  • "Trivia questions that do not add to the understanding or appreciation of a movie/TV-show are off-topic; We're not trying to duplicate IMDB. Please try to explain why your question is relevant for understanding the work beyond banal minutiae." – Paulie_D, TheLethalCarrot, Meat Trademark, Vishwa, J M

  • What is a connection between debugging two million lines of code and the need that the park should be open? – Mouvier Nov 15 '18 at 8:30
  • Welcome to Movies & TV! This question relates to trivia that does not add to the understanding or appreciation of the title and so is off-topic for M&TV as defined in our help guide. – Paulie_D Nov 15 '18 at 10:27
  • In the real world, it depends on how well the code was written/structured, and whether there's a good test suite. Speed of compilation (and bug repeatability) would also play a factor in how much time is needed to debug 2 million lines of code. – Lawrence Nov 15 '18 at 17:26
  • Wasn't Nedry making a point that you shouldn't tick him off, because he was the only one that would take the job at such a low price and that the software is complex due to all the necessary automation? "2 million lines of code" could have easily just been exaggeration. – SiXandSeven8ths Nov 15 '18 at 22:58

I'm a programmer, and we call this "exaggeration to impress the buffoons"

Hammond doesn't know programming, it's possible although unlikely that there ARE 2 million lines of code involved, but unlikely.

Debugging it doesn't involve reading it all in one pass like a book looking for errors, but it is difficult. When I tell my boss I need to debug code I don't tell him I'm pressing SHIFT+CTRL+B repeatedly and fixing anything that errors.

  • So i don't understand why they do that exaggeration at first time i thought it's a joke, but i can't think how much it's because the only thing i coded is C# and C++ and just for patching, and in other cases i used php so it's basic languages but 2Millions it's so unbelievable like some scenes in movies when a character have the satellite mobile with the empty battery at normally the news Sat Phones have a bottom to send a S.O.S to inform a emergency. So in few words the sat phones are Equipped to Deal With Emergencies Look: iridium.com/products/iridium-extreme – David Martins Nov 15 '18 at 8:39
  • And the Deal With Emergencies bottom maybe use a dedicated battery for safety. – David Martins Nov 15 '18 at 8:41
  • but my tough area is networking, i love networking more than programming so connecting a network with eight connection machines is easy, but depending what they mean with connection, WAN or LAN ? However connecting eight machines to a LAN is for kidding for sure. A children with 10 years old can connect 8 computers to a switch with cat6 cables and spike it with the rj45 connector so nothing really hard for today times. – David Martins Nov 15 '18 at 8:50
  • 4
    They didn't have cat6 or even ethernet in 1993. You're totally missing the point. In '93 few people had the faintest clue what computers were or could do, so 'making up some impressive numbers' is just 'sci-fi', nothing more. – Tetsujin Nov 15 '18 at 9:03
  • Yeah sure, but for actually connecting computer to a network i think everyone know how to do that (wifi or wired) connection. But yeah i born in 1995 so i don't know how in 93 LANs works . – David Martins Nov 15 '18 at 22:20

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .