> and its length is one criterion that might signal that to be the case
You seem to be the one misunderstand it.
It's just not. Function length is not a useful metric, at all. The probability of some problems increase with length, but even then it's not the length that will tell you if your code has a problem or not.
If you have length guidelines, your guidelines are bad.
And, yeah, cyclomatic complexity is almost as useless as function length. If you have warnings bothering people about those, you are reducing your code quality.
You seem to be the one misunderstand it.
It's just not. Function length is not a useful metric, at all. The probability of some problems increase with length, but even then it's not the length that will tell you if your code has a problem or not.
If you have length guidelines, your guidelines are bad.
And, yeah, cyclomatic complexity is almost as useless as function length. If you have warnings bothering people about those, you are reducing your code quality.