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A parallel: Technical writers produce 1 page per working day.
At least when I was working with documentation, that was commonly accepted, both by writers themselves and management. It matched our writing department quite well.
30+ years ago, documentation was 98% text, produced with rather primitive tools. Later, modern tools made it much easier to add graphics and other illustraion, typographical effetcts etc. which made the documentation look more "professional" quality. But in spite of more automated and fancy tools, production as measured in pages per day didn't increase: Making a figure to illustrate a point takes as much time as describing it in text.
I haven't been in documentation for years, and nowadays, I guess most software documentation is written by the programmers themselves (so it makes no sense to the users...), and counting number of pages for online documentation is not as easy.
I guess that you will see much of the same as programming languages evolve: The line count produced by an assembly programmer, a K&R C programmer, a Cobol programmer, or a C# programmer would be roughly the same, even though the functionality provided by those "x" code lines vary greatly. There are some obvious exceptions, such as microcoding or APL, but for the algorithmic class of languages, it seems like the variation in line count is not that great.
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To paraphrase Bob Dylan:
"How many lines must a programmer lay down,
Before his lifetime is done?
The answer my friend is blowing in the wind...."
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I'd like to add the most wonderful blues for developers, from Simon and Garfunkel:
Hello Source code, my old friend...
I've come to talk to you again...
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the code... on servers...
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I saw Paul Simon on his farewell tour and he's terrific!
A little John Kay and Steppenwolf back at you
"Code me baby, code me baby All Lifelong"
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I'm writing poor code, nobody loves me
"HE'S WRITING POOR CODE FOR A POOR LIBRARY SPARE HIM HIS FAILS AND HIS DEPENDENCY!"
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You Win! that is the best!
"Scaramouche! Scaramouche! can you code a little better?
Spare him his life from this framework that you see!"
I played R&R R&B for 30+ years. Got tired of the drama and gave up.
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How about "code life years"?
The average app's life is 5 years; if yours go "legacy", is there a bonus?
How about a death march that gets canned? A wash? Or do you go negative?
The Master said, 'Am I indeed possessed of knowledge? I am not knowing. But if a mean person, who appears quite empty-like, ask anything of me, I set it forth from one end to the other, and exhaust it.'
― Confucian Analects
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I agree! Young programmers today have it REALLY EASY... when I was in my 20's, it was the late 80's and everything you wrote was original. There was no internet, no github, no codebase we were taught and got in the habbit of writing reusable functions so you could use them in other programs. When you bought the Microsoft C compiler, it came with a library of manuals. We used to hire engineers based on how many they memorized, because the more they had memorized, the less time they would spend function searching.
Today, all the reusable functions are online, the manuals are online, programmers today just patch together the methods we wrote in my generation, put together a UI, debug and they have a program. The only "real" programming comes in those rare cases where the code is not available online.
The outcome, more programs are published...but are they comprised of lines of code written? I would estimate the real number is less than 10% for most applications!
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Top will keep the wearer entertained ? (10)
We can’t stop here, this is bat country - Hunter S Thompson RIP
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I see what you did there!
But I'll let the others have it - I did yesterdays.
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640
Never throw anything away, Griff
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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We can’t stop here, this is bat country - Hunter S Thompson RIP
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Fascinator (a highly expensive, ineffective head covering worn by posh women at racecourses and weddings).
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. - Mark Twain
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you are up tomorrow
We can’t stop here, this is bat country - Hunter S Thompson RIP
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the goat in your machine wrote: must watch - YouTube
Nope. I don't have to and I won't. I'm guessing Rickrolling ... or worse, a Justin Bieber track. 
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640
Never throw anything away, Griff
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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I'm not THAT evil, (just baaaaad)
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That is exactly what an evil person would say ... 
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640
Never throw anything away, Griff
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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You do know that there are laws against incitement to riot, don't you?
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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He was also the face of Guinness in the UK for many years - despite being allergic to it!
Another of the Good Guys is gone ... ![Rose | [Rose]](https://codeproject.global.ssl.fastly.net/script/Forums/Images/rose.gif) (But not ![Beer | [beer]](https://codeproject.global.ssl.fastly.net/script/Forums/Images/beer.gif) , just in case)
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640
Never throw anything away, Griff
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Just saw that on Faceslap, another legend has left the building.
R.I.P.
Technician
1. A person that fixes stuff you can't.
2. One who does precision guesswork based on unreliable data provided by those of questionable knowledge.
JaxCoder.com
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Oh man, another one? at 75!
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I just saw this earlier. Well, that sucks. RIP, Rutger. 
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I still reckon one of his best/most realistic/natural/believable characterization was in Hitcher.
it's one of the few movies that actually upset me.
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