Lawrence Kesteloot personal blog
Norris Numbers – Walls you hit in program size (2014)
My friend Clift Norris has identified a fundamental constant that I call Norris’ number, the average amount of code an untrained programmer can write before he or she hits a wall. Clift estimates this as 1,500 lines. Beyond that the code becomes so tangled that the author cannot debug or modify it without herculean…
- Points
- 189
- HN comments
- 144
- Submissions
- 3
- Cited by
- 5 commenters
On Hacker News
| Submitted | Title on HN | Points | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| Feb 19, 2018 | Norris Numbers – Walls you hit in program size (2014) by dhotson | 189 | 81 |
| Jul 23, 2014 | Norris numbers by johndcook | 132 | 37 |
| Sep 9, 2015 | Norris Numbers by ingve | 90 | 26 |
Cited in comments
Linked from 9 Hacker News comments by 5 different people, from Oct 2015 to Dec 2025.
Most recent:
- dahart · Dec 22, 2025
- dahart · Oct 6, 2024
- kthejoker2 · Jan 13, 2023
- dahart · Sep 4, 2022
- kthejoker2 · Jan 29, 2022
- exikyut · Sep 18, 2021
