I don't mean to trivialize the OP's experience. This is definitely a very important matter and serious issue in the industry. So forgive me for raising a much smaller, side point.
> I've contributed millions of lines of carefully written OSS code over the past decade
I have never tracked my own output, but I would be surprised if I have written even a single million lines of code, let alone several.
Out of curiosity, is this common? Have people here actually written millions of lines of code themselves? Even assuming two million lines over thirty years, that still averages to around 180 lines per day, every day. It is doable but it is a very high level of sustained output.
I am not doubting the OP. Just noting that this represents an extraordinary amount of coding by any measure.
Side projects on my laptop in one language I use is currently about 200k lines (as measured by "wc -l" so includes blank lines and such). This covers about a decade and a half. This doesn't count all the lines added/changed/removed in the history, a few other languages I use, or anything for work.
Including all those other excluded things, I could see a million per decade across all languages and personal/work projects pretty easily for myself.
Also I find it interesting describing it carefully written. To me that most likely would indicate something that has been reviewed, rewritten and reconsidered multiple times. Thus bringing down the total number of lines. As there would be significant time spend on same lines.
Or would anyone disagree that carefully written code takes more time and in the end probably results lot less lines produced in total?
Might be true, might not be true. Don't make the mistake of comparing lines of code with quality and usefulness of programs. I'm not saying you do, but don't even entertain that thought. ;)
> I've contributed millions of lines of carefully written OSS code over the past decade
I have never tracked my own output, but I would be surprised if I have written even a single million lines of code, let alone several.
Out of curiosity, is this common? Have people here actually written millions of lines of code themselves? Even assuming two million lines over thirty years, that still averages to around 180 lines per day, every day. It is doable but it is a very high level of sustained output.
I am not doubting the OP. Just noting that this represents an extraordinary amount of coding by any measure.