When, if ever, is “number of lines of code” a useful metric?

Question

Some people claim that code\'s worst enemy is its size, and I tend to agree. Yet every day you keep hearing things like

• I write blah lines of code in a day.

Answer 1

To paraphrase a quote I read about 25 years ago,

"The problem with using lines of code as a metric is it measures the complexity of the solution, not the complexity of the problem".

I believe the quote is from David Parnas in an article in the Journal of the ACM.