Colin Percival is right. You have to think before you code. It is especially true in situations where arbitrary measures are applied to quantify the progress made on a project. It is common knowledge of programmers that lines of code do not measure progress. It is equally agreed upon that management usually nevertheless enforces the use of this measure. So is doing research or working on the software design bad for you as a programmer? – You should know better. The more fun programming is for you, the less significant become such hurdles.