this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2023
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The greatest debate of our time (files.catbox.moe)
submitted 1 year ago by Gork@lemm.ee to c/linuxmemes@lemmy.world
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[–] glibg10b@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

You seem to like the lines-of-code metric. There are many lines of GNU code in a typical Linux distribution. You seem to suggest that (more LOC) == (more important). However, I submit to you that raw LOC numbers do not directly correlate with importance. I would suggest that clock cycles spent on code is a better metric. For example, if my system spends 90% of its time executing XFree86 code, XFree86 is probably the single most important collection of code on my system. Even if I loaded ten times as many lines of useless bloatware on my system and I never excuted that bloatware, it certainly isn't more important code than XFree86. Obviously, this metric isn't perfect either, but LOC really, really sucks. Please refrain from using it ever again in supporting any argument.

[–] rikudou@lemmings.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Can confirm it's a shitty metric. I once saved the company I was working at few millions by changing one line of code. And it took 3 days to find it. And it was only 3 characters changed.

[–] agressivelyPassive@feddit.de 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's the curse and blessing of our profession: efficiency of work is almost impossible to measure once you go beyond very simple code.

You can feel like a hero for changing three characters and finally fixing that nasty, or you can feel like an absolute disgrace for needing days to find such a simple fix. Your manager employs the same duality of judgement

[–] rikudou@lemmings.world 1 points 1 year ago

I feel like a hero in this particular case, it was a bug in a code that was written when I was still too young to even read. And no one knew how to run it. We didn't have access to the pipelines so no one knew how to build it and how to run it. It was a very obscure hybrid of C and PHP. I basically had to be the compiler, I went line by line through the whole codebase, searching for the code path that caused the error. Sounds easy enough, right? Just CTRL+click in your IDE. Wouldn't it be a shame if someone decided that function names should be constructed as a string using at least 20 levels of nesting where each layer adda something to the function name and then it's finally called. TL;DR it was a very shitty code.

[–] starman@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Then this: :(){ :|:& };: is most important code in existence.

[–] stylist_trend@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

What you refer to as Linux, is actually called Forkbomb/Linux, or as I've recently taken to calli-[Process Killed]