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Steve Balmer on KLOCs

Ali GajaniCited 5× on HN, 2016–2026
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commentary · general · evergreen · 2016–2026 on HN

A one-minute clip of Steve Ballmer explaining IBM's obsession with counting thousands of lines of code (KLOCs) as a measure of programmers. He explains why that metric is useless.

Linked whenever lines of code or developer productivity metrics are debated.

Software practice, open source & careersTech pioneers & interviews#linesofcode#steveballmer#ibm#metrics

5 comments from Hacker News

@Findecanor2026-02 · in “Claude Code is suddenly everywhere inside Microsoft”

If so, it hasn't always been that way. Steve Ballmer on IBM and KLoC's: ▶ this video (I think it is from "Triumph of the Nerds" (1996), but I can't find the time code)

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@pdkl952020-11 · in “Microsoft's Creepy New 'Productivity Score' Gamifies Workplace Surveillance”

Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on useless performance metrics[1][2]: >> In IBM there's a religion in software that says you have to count K-LOCs, and a K-LOC is a thousand line of code. How big a project is it? Oh, it's sort of a 10K-LOC project. This is a 20K-LOCer. And this is 5OK-LOCs. And IBM wanted to sort of make it the religion about how we got paid. How much money we made off OS 2, how much they did. How many K-LOCs did you do? And we kept trying to convince them - hey, if we have - a developer's got a good idea and he can get something done in 4K-LOCs instead of 20K-LOCs, should we make less money? Because he's made something smaller and faster, less KLOC. K-LOCs, K-LOCs, that's the methodology. Ugh anyway, that always makes my back just crinkle up at the thought of the whole thing. [1] link [2] ▶ this video

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@protomyth2018-01 · in “Why do I do this to myself? Bob's first predictions for 2018 – I, Cringely”

Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires is his and is pretty good. I must admit that the part with Steve Balmer talking about KLOCs is funny and true ▶ this video

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@protomyth2016-08 · in “G.E., the 124-Year-Old Software Start-Up”

> he didn't feel like they wrote enough lines of code. Say what you want about Steve Balmer but he had the right attitude towards that ▶ this video As to the rest, I get the feeling that a lot of players in the market that now need software have the exact same tales being told about them. It is going to be a wonderment to me if I will be about to get through a day in 10 years without a IoT failure.

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@ben_jones2016-08 · in “Why bad scientific code beats code following “best practices” (2014)”

Steve Ballmer on "KLOCs" [1]. Not saying you're taking that extreme but LOC value is certainly debatable... [1]: ▶ this video

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