alt Hacker News> ended up being a million lines of code
This almost reeks of "I've never cleaned up our code base because there is too much code, and didn't even bother having agents/LLM cleaning them up".
You almost never need a million lines of code - this includes your software, infra, testing and operational tools. You didn't ship the linux kernel in 3 weeks and you know it. The code is already speghetti and it achieve the basic functions OK but it will harder and harder to simplify and untangle and maintain.
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As a point of reference, 1MLOC is about the size of the entire Python standard library including tests, as well as stuff like IDLE. (Well, the Python part of the code. There's about half that much again of C in Modules/ .)
Yeah I cannot see how "we shipped 1 million lines of code in three weeks" is... something to be proud of haha
They directly address routine code cleanup and regularly paying down technical debt near the end of the article.
Even the linux kernel doesn't need millions of lines of code; most of the actual LOC is device drivers, and you don't need all of them, you just need the ones for the devices you have.