Lines of Code Are Back (and It's Worse Than Before)
thepragmaticcto.com
February 12, 2026
12 min read
Summary
Lines of code has resurfaced as a metric in the software industry, despite longstanding criticism of its effectiveness. Dijkstra previously condemned it as a costly measure that promotes poor coding practices.
Key Takeaways
- The software industry has returned to measuring productivity by lines of code (LOC), despite long-standing consensus that it is a poor metric for assessing programming quality.
- Major tech CEOs report increasing percentages of AI-generated code, with estimates ranging from 25% at Google to 90% at Anthropic.
- The industry produced 256 billion lines of AI-written code in 2024, which is often celebrated as progress without consideration of the quality or effectiveness of that code.
- Goodhart's Law illustrates that when LOC becomes a target for productivity, it leads to poor coding practices, a problem exacerbated by the rise of AI in software development.
Community Sentiment
MixedPositives
- Lines of code can serve as a useful metric for estimating project complexity, helping developers gauge the scale of their work effectively.
- Reframing lines of code as a measure of efficiency, such as achieving significant functionality in fewer lines, highlights impressive coding skills and can inspire better practices.
Concerns
- AI-generated code often tends to be verbose and bloated, indicating a need for refinement and suggesting that initial outputs may lack quality.
- The reliance on lines of code as a measure of productivity can be misleading, as it does not account for the quality or efficiency of the code produced.
Source
thepragmaticcto.com
Published
February 12, 2026
Reading Time
12 minutes
Relevance Score
52/100
🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
Why It Matters
This page is optimized for focused reading: quick context up top, a clean summary block, and a direct path to the original source when you want the full story.