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.
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:
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.
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 conforms to the grammar a lot more than American 'english.
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.
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 2I’m going to set my terminal width to 1 character. That way my “lines” of code count goes way up.
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.
Imagine trying to read that tho. Suddenly English is formatted vertically.
Isn’t some of Japanese writing vertical? Might help me learn.
Yeah, Japanese is written right to left, top to bottom. Traditionally, at least.
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.
See? You’re expecting people to do it already. And kernel code conforms to the grammar a lot more than American 'english.
I wasn’t trying to suggest that it would be impossible- it’s obviously not. Just that it would be a difficult adjustment.
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?
Today you just ask AI to write you an essay 100 pages long to get that answer.
var three1 = 3
var three2 = three1
…
Repeat until 27.
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.
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!
That’s only one line.
You’re right, 1*1 line.