50k lines considered very large?

<1k very small project
1k-10k small project
10k-100k medium project
>100k large project
xk very large project
But this measure will change according to what language we are using, of course.

@seiju: Yes, as I’ve said, thought points are much better than LOC. From my feeling Python is not more than 5x smaller than Java though [*].

So 50k of Python code are at most corresponding to 250k of Java code, which is not a very large project.

[*] comparing e.g. list comprehensions in Python or closures in Ruby with Google Collections examples. But I would be very interested in a comparison of a LOC factor of Python, Ruby, Scala and Java.

hi stephan,

50K lines in python in the 90s — I’d assume that you didn’t use a lot of libraries ? These days if one writes java code, given the frameworks and libraries, there is little java code that you yourself have to write — atleast, that is the case in 80% of the projects.

So, I’d say that 50K lines of your python code would have a good amount of infrastructure code. So, that would mean NOT MORE than 150K lines of java code today. Again depends on the shop and what frameworks and libraries and maturity of teams/developers used.

I worked on a banking application with about a 250K lines of JAVA CODE with about 70-100 libraries. Although 20% of the application code could have been reduced by refactoring and reworking, I would still call that a LARGE project. Whether it is VERY LARGE, I am not sure BUT I’m almost sure none of us could grasp the entire codebase at any point of time.

I’m interested, as you, to find out other’s opinions.

BR,
~A

@anjan: “50K lines in python in the 90s — I’d assume that you didn’t use a lot of libraries ?”

There were much less libraries than today.

“Thought points” … I like that.

Do you have a reference how to compute these? ^^

@Adrian: No, not sure, just something in my head since I’ve worked a lot with code metrics. But hadn’t have time to write a paper.

if (A && B) { ... }

would have 3 TP (use if (1), get A (1) and B (1) right)

persons.filter ( _.age > 10)

would perhaps have 2 TP (use filter and get expression right)

while

for (Person person: persons) {
    if (person.getAge() > 10) {
       filtered.add( person );
    }
}

don’t know, perhaps 1 for the loop, 2 for the if and expression, 1 for the adding, makes 4 TP.

A little bit like McCabe

@Stephan : python 10 years ago : Yes, given that there were far fewer libraries in both python and java, I assumed you wrote a good amount of infrastructure code. Today, if you were to rewrite the same project, I’d think that it would take you atleast 20-30% number of lines of code ?

Thank you,

I think Ola would be more likely to split out his infrastructure code into a separate library than most would be, so each individual codebase might be small but there might be more of them.

If you split projects up according to cliques you’ll probably find it difficult to pass 50kloc.

And more idiomatic Ruby:

class Song
def initialize(name, artist, duration)
@name, @artist, @duration = name, artist, duration
end

def how_long
“{@duration} minutes”
end
end

Kind Regards

@Marcos: Thanks for the input.