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I contend that developers can be bright, and have even genius aptitude for understanding and coding solo, without being GOOD developers. A good developer creates a quality piece of work, and makes the whole project better.

I'm not saying this is you, but one of the most frustrating programmers I ever worked with wrote more code than anyone on the team, and we had good people on the team. We tracked commits with a ranking software, so it was almost a competition for some people. He churned out swaths of code, leaving behind him ZERO documentation, impenetrable forests, and actually made some of my own code hard for me to understand (I can do that on my own, thank you very much!). Eventually he almost derailed the project, because he became a one man show. People could not follow him. We were not in synch as a team. We actually rewrote some of his features years later, just to regain maintainability.

The thing I wanted from him was to slow down, and spend more time:

1. Improving the quality of the codebase
2. Communicating with the team
3. Working on things that helped others as well as help him finish features / stories
4. Fixing bugs

I don't agree with measuring productivity by lines of code, but it is a key metric. Does your code counter include comments? If so, there is an easy way to maintain your line output while reducing your "bug ratio"; simply increase the quality and quantity of comments you write. Comments rarely have bugs (though they can) and in general, we don't have enough quality comments. I am not condoning code-inflation, but the act of commenting is like a mini code review, it forces you think, refactor and improve.

Developers can be bright, even genius, with an aptitude for understanding and coding solo, without being GOOD developers. A good developer creates a quality piece of work, and makes the whole project better.

I'm not saying this is you, but one of the most frustrating programmers I ever worked with wrote more code than anyone on the team, and we had good people on the team. We tracked commits with a ranking software, so it was almost a competition for some people. He churned out swaths of code, leaving behind him ZERO documentation, impenetrable forests, and actually made some of my own code hard for me to understand (I can do that on my own, thank you very much!). Eventually he almost derailed the project, because he became a one man show. People could not follow him. We were not in synch as a team. We actually rewrote some of his features years later, just to regain maintainability.

The thing I wanted from him was to slow down, and spend more time:

1. Improving the quality of the codebase
2. Communicating with the team
3. Working on things that helped others as well as help him finish features / stories
4. Fixing bugs

I don't agree with measuring productivity by lines of code, but it is a key metric. Does your code counter include comments? If so, there is an easy way to maintain your line output while reducing your "bug ratio"; simply increase the quality and quantity of comments you write. Comments rarely have bugs (though they can) and in general, we don't have enough quality comments. I am not condoning code-inflation, but the act of commenting is like a mini code review, it forces you think, refactor and improve.

I contend that developers can be bright, and have even genius aptitude for understanding and coding solo, without being GOOD developers. A good developer creates a quality piece of work, and makes the whole project better.

I'm not saying this is you, but one of the most frustrating programmers I ever worked with wrote more code than anyone on the team, and we had some good people. He plowed through swaths of stuff, leaving behind him ZERO documentation, impenetrable forests, and actually made some of my own code hard for me to understand (I can do that on my own, thank you very much!). Eventually he almost derailed the project, because he became a one man show. People could not follow him. We were not in synch as a team.

The thing I wanted from him was to slow down, and spend more time:

1. Improving the quality of the codebase
2. Communicating with the team
3. Working on things that helped others as well as help him finish features / stories
4. Fixing bugs

I don't agree with measuring productivity by lines of code, but it is a key metric. Does your code counter include comments? If so, there is an easy way to maintain your line output while reducing your "bug ratio"; simply increase the quality and quantity of comments you write. Comments rarely have bugs (though they can) and in general, we don't have enough quality comments. I am not condoning code-inflation, but the act of commenting is like a mini code review, it forces you think, refactor and improve.

I contend that developers can be bright, and have even genius aptitude for understanding and coding solo, without being GOOD developers. A good developer creates a quality piece of work, and makes the whole project better.

I'm not saying this is you, but one of the most frustrating programmers I ever worked with wrote more code than anyone on the team, and we had good people on the team. We tracked commits with a ranking software, so it was almost a competition for some people. He churned out swaths of code, leaving behind him ZERO documentation, impenetrable forests, and actually made some of my own code hard for me to understand (I can do that on my own, thank you very much!). Eventually he almost derailed the project, because he became a one man show. People could not follow him. We were not in synch as a team. We actually rewrote some of his features years later, just to regain maintainability.

The thing I wanted from him was to slow down, and spend more time:

1. Improving the quality of the codebase
2. Communicating with the team
3. Working on things that helped others as well as help him finish features / stories
4. Fixing bugs

I don't agree with measuring productivity by lines of code, but it is a key metric. Does your code counter include comments? If so, there is an easy way to maintain your line output while reducing your "bug ratio"; simply increase the quality and quantity of comments you write. Comments rarely have bugs (though they can) and in general, we don't have enough quality comments. I am not condoning code-inflation, but the act of commenting is like a mini code review, it forces you think, refactor and improve.

I contend that developers can be bright, and have even genius aptitude for understanding and coding solo, without being GOOD developers. A good developer creates a quality piece of work, and makes the whole project better. Sorta like the really smart guy who hasn't enough common sense to brush his teeth regularly, and can't speak in public.

I'm not saying this is you, but one of the most frustrating programmers I ever worked with wrote more code than anyone on the team, and we had some good people. He plowed through swaths of stuff, leaving behind him ZERO documentation, impenetrable forests, and actually made some of my own code hard for me to understand (I can do that on my own, thank you very much!). Eventually he almost derailed the project, because he became a one man show. People could not follow him. We were not in synch as a team.

The thing I wanted from him was to slow down, and spend more time:

1. Improving the quality of the codebase
2. Communicating with the team
3. Working on things that helped others as well as help him finish features / stories
4. Fixing bugs

I don't agree with measuring productivity by lines of code, but it is a key metric. Does your code counter include comments? If so, there is an easy way to maintain your line output while reducing your "bug ratio"; simply increase the quality and quantity of comments you write. Comments rarely have bugs (though they can) and in general, we don't have enough quality comments. I am not condoning code-inflation, but the act of commenting is like a mini code review, it forces you think, refactor and improve.

I contend that developers can be bright, and have even genius aptitude for understanding and coding solo, without being GOOD developers. A good developer creates a quality piece of work, and makes the whole project better.

I'm not saying this is you, but one of the most frustrating programmers I ever worked with wrote more code than anyone on the team, and we had some good people. He plowed through swaths of stuff, leaving behind him ZERO documentation, impenetrable forests, and actually made some of my own code hard for me to understand (I can do that on my own, thank you very much!). Eventually he almost derailed the project, because he became a one man show. People could not follow him. We were not in synch as a team.

The thing I wanted from him was to slow down, and spend more time:

1. Improving the quality of the codebase
2. Communicating with the team
3. Working on things that helped others as well as help him finish features / stories
4. Fixing bugs

I don't agree with measuring productivity by lines of code, but it is a key metric. Does your code counter include comments? If so, there is an easy way to maintain your line output while reducing your "bug ratio"; simply increase the quality and quantity of comments you write. Comments rarely have bugs (though they can) and in general, we don't have enough quality comments. I am not condoning code-inflation, but the act of commenting is like a mini code review, it forces you think, refactor and improve.