What distinguishes great software engineers? (2019) [pdf] • Hacker News Board

Re: What distinguishes great software engineers? (2019) [pdf]

#171

Post by lolive » Tue, Nov 17, 2020, 2:24 PM UTC

gwittel wrote: post #168

lolive wrote: post #29

The more experienced I get, the more doubtful I am about every code. In the end I will be an ermit on a mountain imagining a code base that does not evolve into a monstrous mess. Honestly, I envy the young Mavericks who code shit and get work done. They at least sleep at night.

> Honestly, I envy the young Mavericks who code shit and get work done. They at least sleep at night. Ignoring the burden shifting of on call rotations, I often find the young mavericks don't sleep at night -- they're fire fighting and debugging their work.

As a freelancer, I am usually hired 3 months before the delivery of the product to help them firefighting. In the end, juniore don't deal with the real issues in their code. We, senior developpers, do.

Note: after a stroke of lucidity, I stopped accepting those kind of missions.

Re: What distinguishes great software engineers? (2019) [pdf]

#172

Post by sombremesa » Tue, Nov 17, 2020, 3:59 PM UTC

austincheney wrote: post #114

wildermuthn wrote: post #73

It’s interesting there are so many different answers given to this question whenever it is asked. If we asked, “What makes a good surgeon?” or as pointed out in another comment, “What makes for a great basketball player?” it seems that there would be less debate. It seems to me that this debate is related to another question, “Why do so many software projects fail when you don’t see any skyscrapers collapsing under t…

So many of the thought exercises present in your comment are missing rather obvious validations. Why do we not ask this of other professions? Because other professions have metrics and regulatory bodies. Why are no skyscrapers falling? Because they are well regulated and required a huge infusion of cash to build. A software company with such a large cash infusion is also likely to not fail. Software engineers are bes…

> Software engineers are best analyzed on a bell curve and once identified according to such plotting relative to other developers the criteria becomes clear.

So how are you plotting this bell curve without having criteria to begin with? Sounds like you already decided what you were looking for.

Re: What distinguishes great software engineers? (2019) [pdf]

#173

Post by renewiltord » Tue, Nov 17, 2020, 7:52 PM UTC

roboyoshi wrote: post #152

renewiltord wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an aside, in his appearance on JRE, there's one part where Joe Rogan asks him about working hard and JC says something like (going off memory) "I don't really like that idea - of working really hard being the thing. Personally, I've noticed that after a while the quality of my work really drops off. Around 13 hours in I'm not really doing a good job". I remember the moment because I was listening to this while dri…

from [1] > people always wind up extrapolating sort of unacceptably where people think oh I worked 18-hour days or something and I have to say no I never worked 18-hour days because I know my productivity falls off a cliff after 13 hours I'm you know that's about the longest that I can do any effective kind of computer work and the key to even being able to get an effective 13 hours is having multiple tasks that you…

My favourite part about this is that he's clearly not bragging or anything. He's just explaining this view, but his threshold is so ridiculously high that it completely defeats the explanation and he doesn't even realize it because he's been doing it for 30 years. In the audio, you can hear him talk with such sincerity.

Absolutely love it.

Re: What distinguishes great software engineers? (2019) [pdf]

#174

Post by austincheney » Wed, Nov 18, 2020, 1:46 PM UTC

sombremesa wrote: post #172

austincheney wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So many of the thought exercises present in your comment are missing rather obvious validations. Why do we not ask this of other professions? Because other professions have metrics and regulatory bodies. Why are no skyscrapers falling? Because they are well regulated and required a huge infusion of cash to build. A software company with such a large cash infusion is also likely to not fail. Software engineers are bes…

> Software engineers are best analyzed on a bell curve and once identified according to such plotting relative to other developers the criteria becomes clear. So how are you plotting this bell curve without having criteria to begin with? Sounds like you already decided what you were looking for.

Objectively it doesn't matter. You need several measurable criteria. Each of those criteria are subject measures. They could be things like quantity of delivery, originality, speed of change, and whatever else you might want. You just need to measure something to establish a plot.