Windows 10 has 10 million lines of code. The Linux kernel has 26 million lines of code. Google’s entire code base has 28 billion lines of code. The English Wikipedia alone has over 462 million lines of code ( 8 Bytes per word). A senior engineer is probably writing about 20 lines of code a day, or about 5,000 lines of code per year. These are all some staggering numbers that almost defy understanding.
What is even more remarkable is that within a given piece of software all it takes is a single line of code, sometimes a single character that can prevent an application from working or present a vulnerability. Sure there is automated debugging, but in the end, to make the world as we know it run, all it takes is a single failure.
If you’re not a programmer, it is easy to look at applications as just buttons to push. When something untoward happens and security is breached, it may be hard to appreciate how such a thing could happen. Think of it this way – if you’re flying in an Airbus A380 and a single rivet pops, it could be a very bad thing.
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