Complex internet services fail in interesting ways as they grow in size and complexity. Twitter’s recent issues show how failures emerge slowly over time as relationships between components degrade. Meta’s quick launch of Threads demonstrates how platform investments can compound over time, allowing them to quickly build on...
the worst programmers write many lines that do less while great programmers write few lines that do more.
That doesn’t sound exactly right. Readability is IMO the most important code quality followed by things like maintainability. Conciseness is a lot further down the list. If I have to use more lines of code or even leave out a little performance optimization for readability, I generally do.
I don’t think we’re in disagreement here, these are just different indicators and consequences of what makes good software. Lines of code will correlate with software quality to a certain degree, but ultimately they’re a flawed metric when the actual goals are readability and maintainability.
Twitter, Threads, and the misunderstood nature of engineering (beehaw.org)
Complex internet services fail in interesting ways as they grow in size and complexity. Twitter’s recent issues show how failures emerge slowly over time as relationships between components degrade. Meta’s quick launch of Threads demonstrates how platform investments can compound over time, allowing them to quickly build on...