| ▲ | stockresearcher 4 days ago | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
> the best analogy I've ever heard. It’s an analogy that gets the job done and is targeted at non-tech managers. It’s not perfect. Dead code has no “weight” unless you’re in a heavily storage-constrained environment. But 10,000 unnecessary rivets has an effect on the airplane everywhere, all the time. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ▲ | runako 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
> Dead code has no “weight” Assuming it is truly dead and not executable (which someone would have to verify is & remains the case), dead code exerts a pressure on every human engineer who has to read (around) it, determine that it is still dead, etc. It also creates risk that it will be inadvertently activated and create e.g. security exposure. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| ▲ | wat10000 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
In this analogy, I'd say dead code corresponds to airplane parts that aren't actually installed on the aircraft. When people talk about the folly of measuring productivity in lines of code, they aren't referring to the uselessness of dead code, they're referring to the harms that come from live code that's way bigger than it needs to be. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ▲ | 1718627440 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
When you are thinking of development and refactoring, dead code absolutely has weight. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||