You are pointing out that &quot;lines of code&quot; is a terribly imprecise metric. That is TRUE, but not HELPFUL. We all <i>know</i> that &quot;lines of code&quot; is a terrible metric. And for only $100&#x2F;hr, for a few hours you can hire an expert to evaluate one file from your codebase and determine its size in something more reliable -- &quot;function points&quot; or some other system that you devise.<p>The thing about &quot;lines of code&quot; is that it&#x27;s CHEAP and EASY. It is also WAY better than having nothing. Which system is more complex, system A written in C++ 2003 or system B which was written Java in 2013? Which system is more complex, System C which is 200,000 lines or system D which is 10,000 lines? Even if I don&#x27;t tell you how &quot;lines&quot; were defined in those two estimates, you can still tell more about C and D than about A and B.<p>&quot;Lines of code&quot; is a terrible metric, which can give only order of magnitude estimates. But that makes it enormously better than no metric at all, or a complex metric which we haven&#x27;t actually measured.