What's the largest commercial software
ever written?
If the size of a software product is measured by
the number of lines
of computer language (source code) required to
make it, then the
current winner is Microsoft Windows 2000. A
complete printout of its
29 million lines of source code would form a
stack of pages 193 feet
high (59 meters), about as tall as a 19-story
building.
Windows 2000 is so large because it includes many
components. In
addition to basic operating system functions, it
contains an Internet
browser, transaction processing modules for
instant data updates over
the network, and dozens of special drivers
(modules to run specific
devices or decode specific data formats).
Creating such a huge software product is no small
challenge. More
than 4,000 people worked together for several
years, exchanging an
average of 90,000 email messages every day.
Writing the code itself
was only a small part of the task; testing and
debugging consumed
more than 90% of the effort.
