Dev Tools · 1h ago
Why code survival beats all other engineering metrics
Most engineering metrics like lines of code or commit counts can be gamed because they measure activity. A new metric called 'survival' tracks whether code lines still exist after months, weighted by how much others build on them. This structurally resists gaming because rewriting or splitting commits doesn't increase surviving lines.
Meridian48 take
The survival metric cleverly exploits Goodhart's law by measuring durability rather than activity, but its reliance on git blame timestamps may still be vulnerable to territorial code churn.
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Every engineering metric gets gamed. One of them structurally can't. →
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