Controlling complexity is the essence of computer programming

That’s a bit reductive; it’s like saying your car engine is a liability when it’s clearly a must-have. As you alluded, though, an over engineered car engine with many moving parts that can malfunction can become a problem. Similarly: Code isn’t a liability; complexity is.

Does make you wonder why some people would evaluate the effectiveness of a developer by the number of lines they've written...

I try to explain this. Many companies have huge code footprints with the accompanying maintenance costs and risks. But what is driving this waste? In my view premature domain coupling.

@elonmusk It's not just applicable to software engineering! It's for any engineering: The goal of engineering and engineer should be delivering the maximum amount of desired functionality at the cost of least amount of complexity, even as desired functionality evolves over time!

Actually is kind of applying to everything in life: the simple the better (google search, #ChatGPT…) but maximal quality.

💯 best code is that you don't write. Complex code is created for readability and comprehension. With AI support we eliminate this. Dope but scary for the industry 😅

Indeed! can we also stop measuring line-of-code check-ins as developer productivity metric?

An asset is just an unrealised expense so don't really follow your point.

$ of revenue per line of code