Complex internet services fail in interesting ways as they grow in size and complexity. Twitter’s recent issues show how failures emerge slowly over time as relationships between components degrade. Meta’s quick launch of Threads demonstrates how platform investments can compound over time, allowing them to quickly build on existing infrastructure and expertise. While layoffs may be needed, companies must be strategic to maintain what matters most - the ability to navigate complex systems and deliver value. Twitter’s inability to ship new features shows they have lost this expertise, while Threads may out-execute them due to Meta’s platform advantages. The case of Twitter and Threads provides a lesson for companies on who they want to be during times of optimization.
Great programmers aren’t playing code golf.
Their code is naturally smaller because they recognize patterns and understand what should be turned into functions/classes/etc and what should not. There absolutely is a point where cutting out lines of code is a negative, but well structured code just takes so much less code than a mess that that’s not what really moves the needle on the metrics.
I don’t think we’re in disagreement here, these are just different indicators and consequences of what makes good software. Lines of code will correlate with software quality to a certain degree, but ultimately they’re a flawed metric when the actual goals are readability and maintainability.