Re:Microsoft open sources parts of Minecraft: Java Edition
by Tade0 on Monday October 08, 2018 @04:03AM
(#18165190)
I had to use this metric to account for the, ahem, work ethic of some and the lack of tests resulting from it.
But I agree - a good test suite is going to be much larger than the code it's testing.
The "sans tests" metric is in my opinion some kind of cheating to keep the number small.
Let me explain: when I was younger, I was already immensely productive as a programmer. But because I was young and naive, I did not care about testing etc.
When I look at code that I produce today in my free time, I observe that the ratio between test code and normal code is about 6:1. It is similarly hard to produce good test code as it is to produce "ordinary" code.
So by demanding that the code is well-tested, we need a lot more code to solve the same job. If I multiply your upper bound of 45 LOC by my factor of 7 (= 1 + 6), I obtain 210-315 LOC/day. This is much nearer to my experience of 400-500 LOC per day. The remaining difference can be plausibly explained by experience of other team member, time for communication in the team, time for communication with customers, overhead demanded by management, ...