brian_jaress@gna.org
Suppose you have six months to write, test, debug, and document some software. From the command line, run:
$ jest 6
which outputs:
1.5E+03 lines (from 3.8E+02 to 6.1E+03)
This means that your software should be about three hundred and eighty to six thousand one hundred lines of code. You may be able to write much more than that, but you’ll probably run out of time to test, debug, and document it.
Six thousand one hundred represents the high end of a range. Even people who are unusually fast would be rushing to get documentation done (assuming they do that last, as most people do). Three hundred eighty is the low end, and one thousand five hundred is the most typical figure from within the range.
If your available time is not phrased in terms of months, you can use several other time units:
$ jest --time-units hours 1000
2E+03 lines (from 5E+02 to 8E+03)
The input number is actually considered a floating point:
$ jest 7.5
2.9E+03 lines (from 7.2E+02 to 1.2E+04)
$ jest --time-units hours 1e3
2E+03 lines (from 5E+02 to 8E+03)
Brian Jaress 2010–02–27