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

Check out wikipedia's definition: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_lines_of_code

SLOC = 'source lines of code'

There is actually quite a bit of time put into these metrics where I work. There are also different ways to count SLOC.

From the wikipedia article:

There are two major types of SLOC measures: physical SLOC and logical SLOC.

Another good resource: http://www.dwheeler.com/sloc/