One good prompt into Github Copilot 'Agent Mode' (running Claude 4) asking for a new feature can often result in up to 5 to 7 files being generated, and a total of 1000 lines of code being written. Your math is wrong. That's hours of work I didn't do, that only took me the time of describing the new feature with a paragraph of text.
It's ridiculous to equate lines of code to amount of engineering work or value.
A massive amount of valuable work can result in a few lines of code. Conversely a millions lines of code can be useless or even have negative value.
It's all about the quality of your prompts (i.e. your skill at writing clear unambiguous instructions with correct terminologies).
An experienced developer can generate tons of great code 30x faster with an Agent, with each function/module still being written using the least amount of code possible.
But you're right, the measure of good code isn't 'N', it's '1/N' (inverse), where N is number of lines of code to do something. The best code is [almost] always that with the least amount of lines, as long as you haven't sacrificed readability in order to remove lines, which I see a lot of juniors do. Rule of thumb is: "Least amount of easily understood LOC". If someone can't look at your code for the first time, and tell what it's doing, that's normally an indication it's not good code. Claude [almost] never breaks any of these rules.
> Claude [almost] never breaks any of these rules.
Well it does for me, frequently. An example is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44126962
Not sure how Claude frequently fails for you, but everybody I know says it rarely fails. I'm definitely not claiming it's perfect tho.
Did you look at the link I sent?
What's your point?
What tech stack are you using? It matters a lot what tech you are using when it comes to how effective the LLMs are.
I'm using VSCode with Github Copilot, which has an "Agent Mode". It proactively reads thru your project files to understand the project, but imo you still have to give it pretty precise instructions to get what you want.