# Negative 2000 Lines of Code | A classic folklore.org gem

**URL:** <https://forum.fossunited.org/t/negative-2000-lines-of-code-a-classic-folklore-org-gem/7705>\
**Category:** Articles we love\
**Created:** [6 April 2026 16:37 UTC](https://forum.fossunited.org/t/negative-2000-lines-of-code-a-classic-folklore-org-gem/7705 "2026-04-06T16:37:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![srihari\_thyagarajan](https://forum.fossunited.org/user_avatar/forum.fossunited.org/srihari_thyagarajan/32/2486_2.png) [@srihari\_thyagarajan](https://forum.fossunited.org/u/srihari_thyagarajan)\
**Post date:** [6 April 2026 16:37 UTC](https://forum.fossunited.org/t/negative-2000-lines-of-code-a-classic-folklore-org-gem/7705/1 "2026-04-06T16:37:00Z")

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I stumbled across this gem called “Negative 2000 Lines of Code” on folklore (no, not [forklore.in](https://forum.fossunited.org/t/introducing-forklore-in/5836) hehe :p) – a storytelling archive with anecdotes about and from the OG Mac team; felt it was worth a share here.

The story is from Feb 1982. Management had this brilliant idea of measuring engineer productivity by counting lines of code written each week (something [Elon considered as well](https://evan-soohoo.medium.com/did-elon-musk-really-fire-people-using-lines-of-code-as-his-metric-15c17254ed33), _eurgh_). Each engineer had to submit a form every Friday with their LoC count.

Bill Atkinson, yes, the same Bill who wrote [QuickDraw](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuickDraw) and was the primary UI designer for the Lisa, thought this was the silliest metric imaginable. His whole philosophy was to write code that was small and fast, and he figured LOC metrics would just encourage bloated, broken code.

Around that time, he had been optimizing QuickDraw’s region calculation machinery. He completely _rewrote_ the region engine with a simpler, more general algorithm that made region operations nearly six times faster. And as a side effect, the rewrite eliminated about ~2,000 lines of code.

So when he sat down to fill out that management form, he paused for a moment, then wrote in: **-2000**.

The article doesn’t say how management reacted, but a couple weeks later they stopped asking Bill to fill out the form, and he was more than happy to oblige!

If you want to read the original story, here it is: [Folklore.org: -2000 Lines Of Code](https://www.folklore.org/Negative_2000_Lines_Of_Code.html)

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**Author:** ![Mz1](https://forum.fossunited.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Mz1](https://forum.fossunited.org/u/Mz1)\
**Post date:** [17 April 2026 14:01 UTC](https://forum.fossunited.org/t/negative-2000-lines-of-code-a-classic-folklore-org-gem/7705/2 "2026-04-17T14:01:25Z")

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> [Bill Atkinson] thought that lines of code was a silly measure of software productivity … his goal was to write as small and fast a program as possible, and that the lines of code metric only encouraged writing sloppy, bloated, broken code

Ah well, with generative LLMs… too late.