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Programming: Doing it more vs. doing it better

kevinmartinjose.com

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Re: Programming: Doing it more vs. doing it better

#71

Post by FrankyHollywood »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #53

Please stop thinking there are 10x programmers - or perhaps stop thinking it means 10x better . It is simply 10x more valuable . And that depends on the organisation you work for, the state of the code base and so on. Look at it this way - sports stars are regularly 10x, 100x more valuable to their team management than A.N.Other professional player. Take football (soccer) - Ronaldo is a waaaay better player than I am…

"Please stop thinking there are 10x programmers"

I don't really agree, since I consider myself a 10x engineer.

I have countless of examples of guys struggling for 2 months on some project. They get stuck, ask for help and I look at it and build it from scratch in a week.

It's not I'm typing faster, it's more about choosing the right architecture and libraries. You can save insane amounts of time by making the right descisions.

Besides the overall architecture descisions there are a lot of small day to day choices to make. If this value is not valid, do I throw an exception, or silently log something?

In both the small and big design descisions there is always a tradeof. Talent and (years of) experience makes that these descisions come from intuition, which can make you a 10x developer.

Re: Programming: Doing it more vs. doing it better

#72

Post by tluyben2 »

networkimprov wrote: post #51
externalreality wrote: post #38

Programming is simple. Domains and interfaces are difficult. People over engineer stuff. People like to think they found the key to hidden wisdom. I believe I just summed up 90% of the difficulty with programming. Just for the record procedural programming and functional programming are the only two styles of programming to me that make sense. Procedural because its how the machine model works and functional because…

Over-engineering drives up LoC counts, so there's (perhaps implict) incentive to engage in it -- either you or your colleagues perceive greater productivity. Re OOP, it provides a method to model what you term a "domain".

I love it how people hate and spit on the idea of code generation, but, in their daily lives, hit short cuts on their keyboard, especially in OOP environments, to generate 1000s of lines of cruft and even seem to enjoy that because it looks like you did so much... File after file appear with 10+ lines in it and checking into git looks like you did herculean work today! It really makes people feel better so I guess why it is liked and popular. With more terse languages (usually some form of fp or apl or forth or a mix) you can easily end up after a day with an empty screen with a blinking prompt; you might have done a lot in your head and on paper but you have no proof for your boss and even you yourself feels like a bit of wasted time.

Re: Programming: Doing it more vs. doing it better

#73

Post by topmonk »

I'm surprised the author didn't mention learning about programming. Programming did come out of the field of computer science, after all.

Not that I think one should never do any hands on practice, but if you spend a large chunk of time learning the concepts of different mathematical fields related to programming, as well as the teaching of other programmers, you'll become a much better programmer than you ever could otherwise.

Re: Programming: Doing it more vs. doing it better

#74

Post by jaabe »

segmondy wrote: post #11
kragen wrote: post #8

Someone who's been programming for three years is still a beginner, even though based on what he wrote here, Kevin is almost certainly a lot better than I was when I'd been programming for only three years. I do find that a lot of programming stuff that used to be hard is easier for me now that I've been progrmaming for 38 years. But that doesn't mean I spend all my time doing things I can do without thinking, and it…

Someone programming for 3 yrs is not a beginner, There are people programming at 3 yrs that are experts and will run circles around you and your 38 years. Some people really have the talent and put in the work to get good. In 2019, the mentorship is available via means of books, blogs, MOOC, youtube videos, conferences. What some folks can achieve in 3 yrs these days is really unbelievable. P/S, I have been hacking a…

I’ve been involved with hiring and I do part time work as an examiner for CS students, both those who go straight through their education, but also on diploma degrees where people upskill after having worked for a while. Kind of like a masters but at bachelor level.

I’ve seen one or two rockstar developers in my time, but even they, would have had trouble keeping up with the silver foxes I know.

I think young programmers have an easier time picking up X framework because they have more time. That’s not really as valuable as knowing computation though, and I frankly think a lot of the YouTube and MOOCs you praise are to blame for the general lack of CS knowledge among a lot of young programmers. Some of them (the college ones) are great introductionary courses, but the majority of MOOCs are amateurs teaching amateurs.

Maybe that works in software because software is in high demand. I mean, I build a RPA process in a few days by google programming. It certainly works, sure, but I also know that it could have been build a lot smarter and more efficient by someone who knew how. That’s the thing with software though, you can get by if you deliver something that works okish. At least until you have to work in a field like medical software, where you code is quite literally never allowed to fail. Because someone will die if it does. At that point you’ll want the 25 years of experience, every time, and if that’s true for medical software, I don’t see why it wouldn’t be true everywhere.

Re: Programming: Doing it more vs. doing it better

#75

Post by jakobegger »

ralusek wrote: post #61
skrebbel wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Small percentages matter when the game is competitive. Programming is not competitive. I agree with your argument but I think your analogy is bad.

How on earth is programming not competitive? Coming up with the wrong data model can result in millions of dollars in technical debt, a failure to fully realize a product, or certainly allow a competitor to win out. Bad programmers can structure a product so poorly that it is simply unpleasant to work on, and you won't be able to hire or retain engineers. I think moreso than most careers, a single software engineer i…

Nobody cares if you wrote the best code in the world if the business model doesn't work out.

I once did some consulting work for a popular technology startup. I was appalled when I saw the hacks they used to get their stuff working.

But their marketing was perfect and all the devs raved about how performant and nice to work with their product was.

But when you looked at the internal code it was clear that a lot of it was written by clueless programmers who did whatever they wanted to get it somehow working. They used the worst hacks to get around the fact that the original product wasn't really built for the area they pivoted into.

That taught me a valuable lesson: everything I thought was important about building a good tech product is irrelevant. As long as it kinda works, you just need someone to sell the thing.

Re: Programming: Doing it more vs. doing it better

#76

Post by tdsamardzhiev »

Interesting. I've "evolved" in exactly the opposite way. I used to go for quality all the time. Nowadays I'm pretty confident getting things done swiftly (and thus enabling more code/design iterations) works better for me in both the short and the long term.

That being said, I definitely don't pretend to be the Thomas Mann of software engineering.

Re: Programming: Doing it more vs. doing it better

#77

Post by photonios »

Mirioron wrote: post #58
jfoutz wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m a little skeptical of 3 years making an expert, but I’ll stipulate it’s certainly possible for the reasons you mentioned. I’m basically an old fart who has learned and forgotten a lot of stuff. It really depends on what you need. I think the 3 year programmer will struggle when moving out of their experience. The person with decades of practice have faced and failed at a dozen core cs problems. They’ll probably f…

I think it depends on how much time they spend programming and what they program. 1. There's a difference between 3 years of experience 4 hours a day 5 days a week and 9 hours a day 7 days a week. That's 20 hours vs 63 hours per week. Furthermore, the 63-hours-per-week person has all of that experience in the last 3 year context. A 20 hours-per-week person would take 9 years to get the same amount of experience in te…

I agree with this. I know quite a few people who not only write code for work, but they spend massive amounts of their spare time building things or contributing to open source projects.

Although it's not guaranteed, it's likely these kind of people are significantly better than their peers.

Re: Programming: Doing it more vs. doing it better

#78

Post by youareverywrong »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #53

Please stop thinking there are 10x programmers - or perhaps stop thinking it means 10x better . It is simply 10x more valuable . And that depends on the organisation you work for, the state of the code base and so on. Look at it this way - sports stars are regularly 10x, 100x more valuable to their team management than A.N.Other professional player. Take football (soccer) - Ronaldo is a waaaay better player than I am…

I feel that you do not understand the 10x concept.

Here is a Steve Jobs interview that hopefully will explain it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09JGcDDLBCw

Re: Programming: Doing it more vs. doing it better

#79

Post by onion2k »

FrankyHollywood wrote: post #71
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #53

Please stop thinking there are 10x programmers - or perhaps stop thinking it means 10x better . It is simply 10x more valuable . And that depends on the organisation you work for, the state of the code base and so on. Look at it this way - sports stars are regularly 10x, 100x more valuable to their team management than A.N.Other professional player. Take football (soccer) - Ronaldo is a waaaay better player than I am…

"Please stop thinking there are 10x programmers" I don't really agree, since I consider myself a 10x engineer. I have countless of examples of guys struggling for 2 months on some project. They get stuck, ask for help and I look at it and build it from scratch in a week. It's not I'm typing faster, it's more about choosing the right architecture and libraries. You can save insane amounts of time by making the right d…

I have countless of examples of guys struggling for 2 months on some project. They get stuck, ask for help and I look at it and build it from scratch in a week.

Have you ever wondered why the engineers don't come and ask your advice before they waste a couple of months?

I'd much rather be known as an approachable and helpful engineer who juniors can ask for advice, even if it means I'll never be known as a 10X engineer.

Re: Programming: Doing it more vs. doing it better

#80

Post by ColanR »

mamon wrote: post #16
felipemnoa wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah. He just got distracted by the trappings of being famous.

No, he had written himself into a corner at the end of the "Dance of Dragons", and then waited for the tv show screenwriters to help him figure out how to proceed from there - that's the most probable explanation I can come up with (hinted by some statements from his interviews).

I think he's also putting it off because nobody's going to talk about him once the series is finished, and he can't bear to lose the attention.
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