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I think you missed the point: the point is that the correct English usage is "fewer than" when discussing quantifiable items (e.g., lines of code). The title should be "...an editor in fewer than 1000 lines of code."

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Thank you for clarifying. I thought for a second it could have been a grammatical nitpick but discounted that since this thread is re: an Antirez post. I personally would be very sad if his writing style became more forced and began to feel like excerpts from The Elements of Style.

This page [0] seems to suggest that "less is also used with numbers when they are on their own and with expressions of measurement or time".

Lines of code is surely a measurement, which makes the use of 'less' here acceptable.

0: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/words/less-or-fewer

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