Comment on Linus Torvalds on a ridiculous job performance metric at tech companies and the prominent figure responsible for it

foggy@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

• BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  I’m not even a computer guy, but even I can see how just using the number of lines of code as a metric would be an extremely stupid method for determining effectiveness. Quality should ALWAYS rule over Quantity, but billionaires are obsessively into quantity, to an extremely unhealthy degree (it’s a mental illness, OCD, hoarding, etc.), that’s how they become billionaires.

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  • teft@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    I’m going to set my terminal width to 1 character. That way my “lines” of code count goes way up.

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    • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      That’s the kind of thinking that a Sociopathic Oligarch could get behind, which is entirely the problem. Gaming and/or hacking the system is preferable to doing things properly. They want to be “disruptive,” even when it’s ill-advised.

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    • SolSerkonos@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      Imagine trying to read that tho. Suddenly English is formatted vertically.

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      • Goretantath@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        Isn’t some of Japanese writing vertical? Might help me learn.

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      • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        Imagine trying to read that

        Kernel code is very often a series of short words, and very often formatted to take a lot of vertical space (i.e lines of code). It can be hard to read, especially when it’s a short code that corresponds to a longer function or location; but with practice we can cope.

        tho

        See? You’re expecting people to do it already. And kernel code confirms to the grammar a lot more than American 'english.

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  • captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    An Ask Lemmy topic recently was “what are some video games that don’t exist.” I gave three answers, but held one back because it does technically exist.

    SQIJ! for the ZX Spectrum was designed to be terrible by a programmer that, as I understand it, was contractually obligated to program a game, but had grown to hate the company. He wrote a game that turned the caps lock on so none of the movement keys worked, and if you edit the code with a memory poke to turn caps lock off, you’ll find there’s no game. It was written in BASIC, and the first line is the most passive aggressive thing I’ve ever read:

    1 goto 2

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  • foggy@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Here’s a very simple example.

    What’s 3^3?

    Or,

    Well it’s 3x3x3

    Which is 3+3+3, 3 times.

    Which is 3+3+3+3+3+3+3+3+3, which is 27.

    Which solution do we prefer?

    3^3 = 27?

    Or

    3+3+3

    +3+3+3

    +3+3+3

    =27?

    Which one uses more lines?

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    • ohlaph@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      var three1 = 3

      var three2 = three1

      …

      Repeat until 27.

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    • ChaosMonkey@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      I prefer 1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1.

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      • cley_faye@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        Code formatter will see this and be like:

        const a = 1
          +1
          +1
          +1
          +1
          +1
          +1
          +1
          +1
          +1
          +1
          +1
          +1
          +1
          +1
          +1
          +1
          +1
          +1
          +1
          +1
          +1
          +1
          +1
          +1
          +1
          +1;
        

        I smell a promotion in your near future!

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      • 01189998819991197253@infosec.pub ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        That’s only one line.

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    • wabafee@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Today you just ask AI to write you an essay 100 pages long to get that answer.

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