Extrait de :

Paul Carroll "Big Blues the Unmaking of IBM" Crown Publishers 1994

p. 101 "The group from microsoft complained about IBM's approach to programming, which didn't seem to allow for creativity. The IBM system didn't measure quality because that was too subjective. The system didn't measure speed, either, until the whole project was finished [...] The IBM system mainly measured how many lines of code someone wrote, which actually encouraged programmers to write inefficient software. [...] IBM managers then began complaining that, according to their measurement system, Microsoft hadn't been pulling its weight. Measured in lines of code, they said, Microsoft was actually doing negative work, meaning Microsoft should have been paying IBM for the condensing it was doing".

Dans un autre passage, que je n'ai pas retrouvé, Carroll explique que cette méthode pour mesurer la production des programmeurs, et qui provoque l'écriture de programmes lourds, était jugée utile par IBM parce qu'elle induisait une forte utilisation des ressources machines et poussait donc à terme les clients à acheter de nouveaux ordinateurs plus puissants.