[I]f we wish to count lines of code, we should not regard them as "lines produced" but as "lines spent": the current conventional wisdom is so foolish as to book that count on the wrong side of the ledger.
“Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight.”
It's appropriate on so many levels. Lines of code can be part of a measure of what has been accomplished, just like a heavy airplane is a great accomplishment so long as it flies. Yet we would never consider adding weight to be our goal.
It starts at zero and increases as the big pieces are added. It stops at a well defined number that is specified.
> “Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight.”
Nice. And then we have Windows that needs dozens of gigabytes disk space and can do nothing useful at all, while debootstrapped Debian chroot can easily serve a dynamic website backed by a database and weigh two orders of magnitude less (minus the data, obviously).
The analogy is quite apt, but the context of the author's company makes the sentence hilarious.
Similarly, the Ariane 5 disaster doesn't mean that the idea of measuring the physical world with science is wrong.
There's nothing wrong with Taylorism. It works very well in a variety of fields (e.g. Uber and Amazon use Taylorism very effectively to manage their line workers). The fields where Taylorism isn't used (e.g. software development) are far less reliable and effective - Amazon can guarantee that your package will arrive in 2 days, can you guarantee that your software team will ship on time?
I'd say that those workers were successful in spite of Taylorism. Don't fall into the trap in thinking that just because a methodology was applied, that it contributed to success.
The best evidence I can give in support of this is Deming:
When managerial "scientists" can achieve anything even remotely comparable to that level of reliability and reproducibility, it will be time to take it seriously as a science. Until then, it just isn't one.
Sure. At the company I work for, we almost always deliver on time. You don't need Taylorism to do that.
Any learning that happens is in spite of Taylorism.
Taylorism is why, for example, some companies still use lines of code written as a measure of productivity.