It is always fascinating to know how many lines of codes are written to create an application. Before the rise of the open-source platform, all the companies used to keep their background information secret. Things have become more open today, and there are several companies who have disclosed the size of their products in public. For example, a simple iPhone game app takes one hundred thousand lines of code. The Age Of Empire online game took more than 1 million lines of code. The Hubble Space Telescope has a few million lines of code for it to operate perfectly. Here are the top 5 largest programs ever written in terms of lines of code.

Human Genome Project – Human Genome Project is a scientific research project with the aim to determine the sequence of human DNA. The ultimate goal is to map all the genes of the human genome. It is already the largest collaborative project in biology till date. The project started in 1990 and ended in 2003. The project was performed across twenty different universities. The software for analyzing the human genome and map the nucleotide base pairs of DNA took 3300 billion lines of code. In fact, the coding took more time than the actual execution of the project.

Google – Google is the largest platform in terms of the internet services it provides. Apart from the Google search engine which is the largest part of the Google platform, there are so many equally big services. There are services like Gmail, Google Drive, Google Calendar, Google+, Google Translate, Google Photos, Google Notes, Google Maps and what not. Therefore, we are considering Google as a combination of all these products and services. All these constitute nearly 2000 billion lines of code. With the constant upgrading and addition of features and new services, in the next few decades, Google is going to overcome the Human Genome Project in terms of lines of codes.

Average High-End Car Software – This should come as a shock to many. A lot of people have the opinion that the operating systems have the most lines of codes which is not far from the truth. The car software in itself is an operating system and more. It is like the Windows with all the inbuilt software applications. It is important to note that not all the car software that you see in the dashboard has millions of lines of code. We all know how robust the dashboard of high-end cars like BMW, Mercedes and likewise is. The higher price you pay, the better the dashboard software will be. In fact, with the introduction of automation and driver-less driving, the lines of code for the car software have increased exponentially. It has been found that average high-end car software has over 100 million lines of code to execute everything perfectly and provide the buyer with a value for their money.

Mac OS X – Mac OS X is the latest operating system from Apple, and it is well-received by the Apple fans who were tired of lack of innovation and user-friendliness in the previous Mac OS versions. It is truly a major development from Apple as it combines the desktop and mobile devices under one platform. Its competitors like Google and Microsoft are still struggling in this department. Mac OS X has cross-platform functionality with iOS 8 and above. Mac OS X is considered to be the largest operating system ever written. It contains over 85 million lines of codes. It is surprising to find that Window 10 which is believed to be the best operating system in the market right now can come close to it. One can argue about optimization, but Mac OS X is more optimized than Windows.

Facebook – After Google, Facebook is hands down the largest online platform. A lot of users are unaware of exactly what Facebook has in store. Facebook social network platform along with the messenger is massive enough. On top of that, there is a gaming and app platform where you can not only use apps and play games, one can also develop and deploy apps. There are so many other services like groups, moments, news platform, events, notes, places, and various such products and services. The one thing common about Google and Facebook as online platforms is that they are continuously upgrading and adding new features. Facebook with all its services has over 60 million lines of code.

It is important to understand that this serialization is based on the information given by the companies. Many companies are yet to disclose the exact number of lines of code they have written for their product or service. Therefore, it is safe to assume that there could be a few software applications that have more lines of code written and can dethrone any of the above top 5 largest programs ever written.

Kitty Gupta
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