Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The 10x developer is not a myth (2013)

ybrikman.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 248 posts

Re: The 10x developer is not a myth (2013)

#151

Post by pawnxing »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #85

I 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…

I likewise had a boss 25 years ago. But for me the story ends there. I don't even remember his name!

Re: The 10x developer is not a myth (2013)

#153

Post by sebringj »

uranian wrote: post #109
sebringj wrote: post #87

Demis Hassabis, John Carmack and Elon Musk ARE 100X developers. Why stop at 10X?

10x developer is just a metaphore, not based on some mathematical model. For me it relates to the difference between an average singer in an average band and Prince or Whitney Houston for example.

Yah its hard to give it a direct number but to say its a myth is just obviously wrong given the evidence of these brilliant minds we know exist.

Re: The 10x developer is not a myth (2013)

#154

Post by wolco »

jaimebuelta wrote: post #69
nostrademons wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was a weird example to me because anyone who's dealt with exponential traffic increase knows that you will end up rewriting several times. Dean's Law: "Plan for 10x growth, but expect to rewrite before 100x": https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.c... (page 11) Additionally, one thing the best programmers I know have all drilled into me is don't write code speculatively . You should write co…

THIS: It's very much a novice mistake (one that I've made a dozen or so times, sigh) to think that you can jump straight to your "ideal" architecture without any of the steps or missteps along the way. Code evolves as the problem evolves and NEEDS to be adapted. Is impossible to foresee the future.

I disagree forward looking software design with patterns that could be reused for scaling is the right approach.

Re: The 10x developer is not a myth (2013)

#155

Post by AstralStorm »

jaimebuelta wrote: post #69
nostrademons wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was a weird example to me because anyone who's dealt with exponential traffic increase knows that you will end up rewriting several times. Dean's Law: "Plan for 10x growth, but expect to rewrite before 100x": https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.c... (page 11) Additionally, one thing the best programmers I know have all drilled into me is don't write code speculatively . You should write co…

THIS: It's very much a novice mistake (one that I've made a dozen or so times, sigh) to think that you can jump straight to your "ideal" architecture without any of the steps or missteps along the way. Code evolves as the problem evolves and NEEDS to be adapted. Is impossible to foresee the future.

This approach generates regular expensive rewrites that a typically slightly more flexible and/ or modular solution would avoid.

The key words are slightly. The trap is to overgeneralise or apply a technology or approach like a hammer without understanding its limitations.

Out is impossible to foresee the future, but trivially easy to see current requirement and extrapolate a bit.

Re: The 10x developer is not a myth (2013)

#156

Post by AstralStorm »

UK-AL wrote: post #93
ajuc wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not only about frameworks and ORMs, it's about refusing to comprehensively understand stuff before you use it or change it. It can be any abstractions, even (usually) the ones you created by yourself. It's easier to add a special case check, than to read through the codebase to see if it's even needed, or, God forbid, to refactor in 5 places so it's not needed (it might break sth else!!! I would have to read…

I think types should not be nullable unless explicitly specified.

That, much like a null check, solves only a special case.

Re: The 10x developer is not a myth (2013)

#158

Post by iamacynic »

Bartweiss wrote: post #123
awkward wrote: post #101

The reason for pushback on the idea 10x programmers isn't the real gradient of skill, it's the labor aspect. Lots of companies want to hire 10x without paying 10x dollars, and they've figured out that blowing smoke up the ass of young people (though it works better on young men than women) is a way to squeeze blood from that stone. Especially if you're working in a small company, you're going to hit a point when ther…

> you're going to hit a point when there is a massive wall of work to be done, bigger than you would ever be able to handle alone This is my core complaint. All software development is (eventually) rate-limited somewhere other than developer brilliance. Most business software hits this limit fast. A huge portion of business software is stuff you can't solve with brilliance - tasks from integrating with other companie…

documentation and customer support can really hurt a young product organization, and these are not solved by brilliance, but rather diligence and patience.

Re: The 10x developer is not a myth (2013)

#159

Post by psyc »

awkward wrote: post #101

The reason for pushback on the idea 10x programmers isn't the real gradient of skill, it's the labor aspect. Lots of companies want to hire 10x without paying 10x dollars, and they've figured out that blowing smoke up the ass of young people (though it works better on young men than women) is a way to squeeze blood from that stone. Especially if you're working in a small company, you're going to hit a point when ther…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_consequences

Re: The 10x developer is not a myth (2013)

#160

Post by jorgemf »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #85

I 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…

> I don't think I could conceive of and write TensorFlow in 10 years of work

Google was using for years a tool for deep belief networks, then suddenly deep learning was a thing and they started TensorFlow based on what they learn of the deep belief networks tool. So you can track the origins of TensorFlow to 2010 or before, and for sure it wasn't developed for 1 person. It could start as a 5 person project and now probably it is more than a hundred (aiming very low). If you add on top of it all the research done where they have been collecting ideas, then you realize the amount of knowledge behind TensorFlow is huge. And the amount of people and time under it is also huge. Probably no one can understand it completely, even if he/she spend 10 years.

Post reply on HN