As a coder, I wouldn't normally use the two different conventions. you show in your examples. So it does little to tell us about the importance or lack there of line count.
Let me state clearly - to use line count , in absence of other considerations, IS meaningless. But if a 1 person, using 1 language, with the same set of tools withing a 3 month period implements the same algo without bugs - I'll bet you the shorter one was theone written second. The fact that you many ppl will state the shorter line count of rewrites is a sign of improving skill I think actually presents some "anecdotal" evidence that there is some truth that shorter code is better code. My skill level increases a lot faster than my coding style changes over time. So while far from conclusive, the fact that I find my code gets shorter the second time - and it is usually done more skillfully, it seems there is a correlation of some sort between lines of code and quality. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
