Something I saw on Twitter once: How to be a 10x programmer: make 10 other 1x programmers into 2x programmers.
This only works when the programming task is highly parallelizable.
The 10x developer is not a myth (2013)
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Re: The 10x developer is not a myth (2013)
#82Comparing developers is like comparing apples to pears. The vagueness comes from the fact that software development is such a broad profession. It is a combination of many different factors, for example handling with databases is totally different than graphics. Of-course there are big differences between beginners and experienced software developers, but it becomes harder when you compare specializations.
Furthermore, I do want to note that understanding user needs can greatly improve your effectiveness. Because not building something can save you multiple weeks or months of programming.
Re: The 10x developer is not a myth (2013)
#83Here's a question: Is Picasso a 10x artist? The thing about the 10x claim is that it takes something complex and creative and applies a scalar multiplier to it. Talking about 10x programmers is _semantically_ problematic.
It's a self-serving mythology, because a few individuals can claim to be 10Xers to gain special privileges. It's telling that there's no such thing as industry talent matrix. Instead of general skills - creativity, accuracy, speed, debugging insight, ability to learn new languages/frameworks, team leadership, good-to-have-around vs toxic asshole, and so on - we have this myth of "the rockstar". A certain kind of mana…
It's a self-serving mythology, because a few individuals can claim to be 10Xers to gain special privileges.
Do people say "I'm a 10x programmer" and get promoted or some sort of perk? Get better jobs by saying that you're a rock star?
Of course not. The premise of 10x programmers, outside of bloviating bloggers, is primarily one that people observe in programming teams. The "go to" person, the person who invariably initiates all of the important shifts and base designs, etc. Many projects start around such a person, they leave and it slowly rusts under a team of normal competency developers, who eventually all disperse and join another project started by a standout developer.
My experience in this industry is that there are absolutely extreme exception developers, and thinking back I'd say it was about 1 out of every 100 developers in most orgs. They were the people who didn't need to be hand held, used heuristics to find solutions, developed designs that invariably became the kernel of solutions, etc. Other developers were critical in the mix, but the notion that all are the same is destructive and unrealistic.
Re: The 10x developer is not a myth (2013)
#84I wasn't sure I believed in 10x developers, then I thought "I've worked with people 3.2 times more productive than me, and I've also worked with people 3.2 times less productive than me..."
Re: The 10x developer is not a myth (2013)
#85I had a boss 25 years ago (smart guy, did compiler work, etc. for new computer architectures) who claimed that there was really a 100x factor difference from the best to the worse. I believe this: would you rather have one day of work from Daphne Koller, Peter Norvig, or Jeff Dean - or 100 days from an average developer? Well, the answer is that "it depends." There is a ton of work that can be effectively done by non-rock stars, and there is some work where a 100x person can do things that other people can't, no matter how much time they spend.
An example: I use TensorFlow, but looking at the concept and implementation, I don't think I could conceive of and write TensorFlow in 10 years of work.
Re: The 10x developer is not a myth (2013)
#86I think the point of "10x" programmer is largely missed because we're looking in the wrong place: at the 10x programmer. It's better to look at what comprises the implied 1x programmer. If it's the mean, then there is a really, really long tail of programmers out there that are really bad at their jobs. It's quite easy to be 10x, 100x, or even infinitely-x better than them.
Infinitely times better? There are just some problems that bad programmers, no matter how much effort they expend, will never solve. Even if I take 10 years to solve a problem that a bad programmer will never solve, that makes me infinitely more productive on that sort of task over the bad programmer.
"But how many problems like that will you ever encounter in your career?" If you're content being nothing more than a CRUD website developer, then not very many. If you want to do more with your career than collect a paycheck, then you can structure a career around doing nothing but solving new, hard problems.
I'm a very productive programmer over most people because not only do I know how to do lots of things, I can employ them very quickly. I know it's popular to say we don't have to memorize things in the era of Google and StackOverflow, but there is a real, significant, large productivity improvement for not having to context-switch. I use Google and StackOverflow, sure, but let's be honest, most of the time is spent just trying to figure out what half the questions are even asking, say nothing about whether or not the "accepted" answer is correct and relevant to our tasks.
No, I don't have everything memorized. It's impossible to memorize everything. But that doesn't mean not memorizing things out of some sort of perverse spite is a winning strategy. No one strategy is the best strategy; a myth we consistently perpetuate in this field despite the constant evidence to the contrary. You have to employ all strategies. But all most programmers have is googling. I have googling and a larger corpus of memorized knowledge.
Re: The 10x developer is not a myth (2013)
#87Demis Hassabis, John Carmack and Elon Musk ARE 100X developers. Why stop at 10X?
Re: The 10x developer is not a myth (2013)
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is a huge cost to handwriting SQL too that one mist be careful of - it is very easy to result in poor abstractions as a result of inconsistent apis from lack of abstraction over SQL. My company is currently in the process of moving back to an ORM after 5 years or so abandoning ORM usage due to nightmarish performance using NHibernate in .Net (maybe more of an indictment on the code than anything else, but I don…
> inconsistent data fields being returned by various queries, resulting in inconsistent api endpoint data returned to the client and thus inability to safely abstract without significant hacks/nebulous data model state. You are coding against actual queries? Why not functions to hide the table abstractions: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/sql-createfun... https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/create-…
That's essentially building an ORM (well, a data mapping layer) out of PL/SQL functions rather than your main language. Why would that be better?
Re: The 10x developer is not a myth (2013)
#89I find the arguments in the "Programming is about choices" section a bit contrieved. Yes, if you have a small team of say 10 people, a very competent lead engineer can make all the difference by setting up proper testing, SCM, CI, etc. i.e., by choosing the right tools and people for the job. However, as soon as you have a slightly larger team, these decisions will usually not be made by one single person. If you hav…
Why do you assume it's all about code?
When I look at great developers, they can not only build things without taking as many dead ends but they can explain why and share their reasoning with the rest of the team effectively.
The very best can not only complete their own tasks well but their "prowess" (for lack of a better term) is witnessed and people seek out their advice.. therefore making others more effective too.
Re: The 10x developer is not a myth (2013)
#90[...] They studied professional programmers with an average of 7 years' experience and found that the ratio of initial coding time between the best and worst programmers was about 20 to 1 I thought the perceived idea about the 10x developer was that he/she is 10x better than the average programmer, not the worst. So even this scientific study (from the 60s) says that there aren't 10x developers according to this defi…
Also I think in the 60s there were analysts, the people who solved the problem and programmers, the people who converted the solution to code. Anyway, in the 60s the profession was in its infancy, so I'm not sure how much studies from this era matter today.
I also wonder how the productivity gap has been affected by modern development technology, or even the languages themselves.