Lines-of-code/day is a common bogus metric in primitive performance review systems. I have never seen anybody get a bonus for achieving a large negative number. That can’t be right! What whould a guy be worth to you if he could reduce the size of your system by 10-20%? more.
Lines of code per day is a useful metric, just not in the way people generally use. If I know how many lines of code per day I can generally write, and I can SWAG an estimate of how many lines of code it will take me to express feature/function X, then I can have an idea how long it will take me to generate feature/function X. I guess the point is that LoC/day is a personal metric that loses meaning when you try to compare it to someone else or use it for anything other than personal use.
“Bill Atkinson, the author of Quickdraw and the main user interface designer, who was by far the most important Lisa implementor, thought that lines of code was a silly measure of software productivity…”