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thesmartyesterday at 8:07 PM7 repliesview on HN

Many of my industry friends and I were skeptics about all the things the OP mentions, still am. And yet, I am able to push 30-40K lines of nearly perfect code a day now.

It's different just like the steam engine was different, except technology moves much 100x faster now than it did then. It's different and the same.


Replies

mediamanyesterday at 10:31 PM

The 40k lines of code a day crows are amusing. In solving any problem solvable by code, there's a ratio of non-coding work to coding work, and codex et al all help immensely with the coding work but help less with the non-coding work.

Non-coding work is thinking about the system architecture, thinking about how data should flow, thinking about the problem to be solved, talking with people who will use it, discovering what their objectives are.

Producing 40k lines a code per day simply means you're not doing any of that work: the work that ensures you're building something worth building.

Which is why the result is massive, pointless things that don't do the things people actually need, because you've not taken any time to actually identify the problems worth solving or how to solve them.

It's a form of mania that recalls Kafka's The Burrow, where an underground creature builds and builds an endless series of catacombs without much purpose or coherence. When building becomes so easy when it was so hard -- and when it becomes more fun to build and watch codex's streams of diffs fly by, than to plan -- we forget the purpose of building, and building becomes its own purpose, which is why we usually so little actual productive impact on the world from the "40k lines of code a day" cohort.

rawlingyesterday at 8:25 PM

What job are you in where you can even come up with problems that -need- 30-40k lines of code a day?

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_seyesterday at 8:33 PM

If you are pushing 40k lines of code per day you are an idiot and should be fired.

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ThrowawayR2yesterday at 9:43 PM

> "I am able to push 30-40K lines of nearly perfect code a day now."

It is physically and physiologically impossible for anyone to be reviewing "30-40K lines of nearly perfect code a day" to the extent needed to push it with confidence in a sensible development process.

vor_yesterday at 10:35 PM

Are you really reviewing 30-40k lines of code a day?

fzeroraceryesterday at 11:02 PM

Why do you and many of your industry friends conveniently never actually post their 'perfect code' when asked for proof? I've asked like five different people now that make these claims and they just vanish into the ether.

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Bnjorogeyesterday at 8:12 PM

do you understand every line of code you churn out?