FAA: 2M lines of code process new air traffic system

http://www.networkworld.com/article/2917198/software/faa-2-million-lines-of-code-process-new-air-traffic-system.html

by earino • 11 years ago

16 8 11 years ago

DigitalSea• 11 years ago

When I hear statements like 2 million lines of code, I ask myself whether this is actual code that a team of developers wrote or if they're counting the lines in third party packages and frameworks they are using. LOC is not an accurate measurement of the quality of a software application. Interestingly it seems that it is written in the Ada programming language as well (a favourite amongst mission critical software applications and military purposes): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_%28programming_language%29

chipsy• 11 years ago

I'm tempted to read it as "merely" 2 million given how bloated these projects tend to become. healthcare.gov is reported to be 500 million LOC, in comparison. I simply don't know how one writes that many lines, but it happened.

(And FWIW, I'd feel much safer if the figure for ERAM were 200KLOC or 20KLOC.)

mhuffman• 11 years ago

I simply don't know how one writes that many lines ...

I think with a template get ide and a verbose language ... Think eclipse and Java ...

oskarth• 11 years ago

Using code generation.

geocar• 11 years ago

LOC is an accurate measure of quality, but it's an inverse measure.

punch_card• 11 years ago

Rubbish. LOC is a measure of size. How well it is put together is entirely something else. Seeing that it is done in ada, at least it shows the system architects have a clue about large software systems.

Someone1234• 11 years ago

So the Linux kernel is worse quality now than in 1991?

brudgers• 11 years ago

100 developers @ 10 LOC/day @ 200 day/year @ 10 years = 2,000,000 LOC.

FAA: 2M lines of code process new air traffic system

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