Not "unwilling to discuss it here," just trying not to post everything twice. Now as regard to that objection- I have also read that the empirical studies of defect rate seem to show that defect rate does not correlate with anything once you control for size (leading to the argument that you should decrease size at any cost). I haven't examined the studies or the nature of the code in them. My personal observation is that not all code bases are the same (even those with the same number of defects). Some code bases seem to have a brittle behavior where there is an unlimited reserved of subtle bugs that depend on particular circumstances to happen (so likely undercounted, so called mysterious crashes) and other code bases do not (they are rock solid). I don't think this is captured by just counting tracked defects (as a "mysterious crash" can one bug or many interacting). But, yes current industrial consensus is size is most important.

Thanks for replying. "Current industrial consensus" isn't that size is most important - far from it, approximately nobody pays any attention to that. Programs are routinely built by slathering code and people are proud of how much they write instead of how little.

Yet it seems to be what the evidence is telling us.