# Quotes > From there it is only a small step to measuring 'programmer productivity' in terms of 'number of lines of code produced per month.' This ia a very costly measuring unit because it encourages the writing of insipid code, but today I am less interestd in how foolish a unit it is from even a pure business point of view. My point today is that, if we wish to count lines of code, we should not regard them as 'lines produced' but as 'lines spent': the current conventional wisdom is so foolish as to book that count on the wrong side of the ledger. Edsger Dijkstra > A little copying is better than a little dependency Rob Pike - [Go Proverbs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAAkCSZUG1c&t=9m28s)