An executive at my workplace asked me and my group of developers the question:


  How many lines of code can a C#
  developer produce per month?


An old system was to be ported to C# and he would like this measure as part of the project planning.

From some (apparently creditable) source he had the answer of "10 SLOC/month" but he was not happy with that.

The group agreed that this was nearly impossible to specify because it would depend on a long list of circumstances. But we could tell that the man would not leave (or be very disappointed in us) if we did not come up with an answer suiting him better. So he left with the many times better answer of "10 SLOC/day"

Can this question be answered? (offhand or even with some analysis)

Ask your executive how many pages of contract his lawyer can write per month. Then (hopefully) he will realize that there's a huge difference between writing a single-page contract and writing a 300-page contract without loopholes and contradictions. Or between writing a new contract and changing an existing one. Or between writing a new contract and translating it to a different language. Or to a different law system. Maybe he'll even agree that "pages of contract per unit of time" is not a very good measure for lawyer productivity.

But to give you some answer to your real question: In my experience, for a new project a few hundred SLOC per day and developer aren't uncommon. But as soon as the first bugs appear, this number will drop sharply.
