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1x Programming

tim.mcnamara.nz

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Re: 1x Programming

#141

Post by saila »

overgard wrote: post #128

To me, a big part of multiplying your programming efficiency isn't about a crazy investment of time or ruining your other priorities in life, it's more about objectively looking at how you work and removing or minimizing the things that are a waste of time. It's really about self reflection. Are you spending a lot of time hunting and pecking through menus? Why not learn the keyboard shortcuts? Are you confused about…

I made another comment about this elsewhere in this thread, but many programmers don't seem motivated to learn these productivity multipliers. There's a huge difference between "it's just a job" and "it's a job but I (at least usually) enjoy it."

I've never quite understood this because learning skills and techniques as described above makes the job easier and more enjoyable IMO, but I also can't fault people for not caring too much because in the end it is just a job.

Re: 1x Programming

#142

Post by [deleted] »

angarg12 wrote: post #25

I praise 1x programmers, but for reasons that might go against the grain in HN. I'm from Spain so our working ethic is different from the Anglo-Saxon world. "Work to live, don't live to work" as the saying goes. My principles for a 1x programmer: * Work is a means to an end. A job should support the lifestyle you want to achieve, not be an end on itself. * 9-to-5 is a perfectly reasonable schedule. Fiercely protects…

[deleted]

Re: 1x Programming

#143

Post by enneff »

AA-BA-94-2A-56 wrote: post #140
enneff wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m Australian and I agree with your general perspective. However I disagree with this: > Strives to do a "good enough" job rather than absolute excellence. For me, one of my biggest sources of personal satisfaction is striving for excellence. Of course I have realistic expectations, there are many pressures that may ultimately prevent me from achieving excellence, but having the goal of being the best at my craft is…

I'm also Australian and let me just say; careful, this is the path to burn out. I spent much of the Easter weekend learning Go, and to me that was a solid investment of my time. I do not make a habit of coding extracurricularly though. If I want to hone my skills or work on a personal project, I'll do this in dead time during my fulltime work. As an exercise, it is better to improve your ability to get things done wi…

I’ve experienced burnout. (Probably while producing a lot of the docs you consumed learning go, btw ;)

Like I said, I agreed with my parent post’s points on just working 9-5 (on average I probably work less than that), but I just think it’s important to try to do things really, really well, but within the constraints of having a balanced life.

Re: 1x Programming

#144

Post by robocat »

kbenson wrote: post #9
henning wrote: post #7

There is plenty of room for excellence in the humble day-to-day glue programming this post talks about. There are arguably better and worse glue programmers. I have gotten better at doing the kind of work the post describes. I also think macho bullshit posted by VCs talking about "losers", "10x engineers", and "shape manipulators" who haven't written production code in decades if they ever did and have never written…

I'm not sure I've ever heard of a "shape manipulator" before, and I'm at such a loss as to what it could be that Google isn't super useful without additional context to lean on. The only thing I saw that might fit would be NumPy arrary shape manipulation. Anyone care to expand on what a shape manipulator is and where that came from?

shape rotator (also numbercel) - STEM type person - engineer stereotype good at visualisation (can pass minds-eye shape rotation intelligence tests).

wordcel - stereotyped humanities or liberal arts person (or sales?) - word with suffix of cel (meme templated from incel etcetera but without that original meaning).

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/cultures/wordcel-shape-rotato...

https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/wordcels-numbercels-defi...

Re: 1x Programming

#145

Post by [deleted] »

raz32dust wrote: post #85

If by 10x, you mean engineers that add 10x more value compared to an average engineer in the team, then from working 10+ years in the industry, it is abundantly clear to me that 10x programmers exist, and a good team is likely to have 5-10% of those. However, these engineers are rare, and when you do find them, they are not perfect. They might have flaws in other areas - communication and teamwork is a common one. Mo…

[deleted]

Re: 1x Programming

#146

Post by enneff »

gernb wrote: post #41

Something that came up recenty for me. I took a job at FAANG company and my productivity from my POV sucks! I doubt I've written more than 2k lines of code in 9 months! I'm debugging hardware/driver issues in a giant code base (~250k files) that I don't know and APIs I've not used before. Conversely, in my own hobby code I wrote ~2k lines in the last 10 days. It makes me wonder how often 10x is about circumstance vs…

If you’re debugging then it’s not surprising that you’re writing few lines of code, but that kind of work tends to have huge impact for users.

Re: 1x Programming

#147

Post by Msw242 »

Macha wrote: post #26
jt2190 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Doubled productivity… 10x… Since we’re putting numbers on things, how did we go from 2x to 10x?

That 2x is being assumed to apply to all 8 devs, so if you 2x the performance of 8 devs you get 8 extra devs worth of productivity. I assume the logic is that if that took 1 person worth of effort, then that person had 8x output.

Yeah, exactly! I think 8x is basically 10x (less than one magnitude difference). You got my math

Re: 1x Programming

#148

Post by vlunkr »

klipt wrote: post #130
jjav wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some will argue that one could never be a good developer following those principles. I'll argue those people need a reality check based on how things work in every other profession. My dentist is a great dentist but she works 8am-3pm and most decidedly does not spend an additional 8 hours slogging through leettooth exercises on topics barely realated to the practice of dentistry. My friend is a respected surgeon, b…

> My friend is a respected surgeon, but when he clocks out of the hospital he goes cycling and to the beach. But to become a surgeon, he probably had to put in ridiculous hours for years as a med student and then resident. Going through that gauntlet is what earned him the reasonable hours and good pay, by reducing his competition. Similarly the people doing leetcode are doing it to stand above the competition and ma…

> Basically the general rule is if you desire above average money, you have to put in above average effort at some point in your career.

My (probably cynical) take is that most SV devs are also 1x. You make the big bucks not just by being a 10x dev, but by some combination of going to the right schools, making the right connections, learning how to negotiate and when to look for new jobs, learning to jump through the big tech interview hoops etc. So yeah, you have to put in above average effort, but maybe not directly into improving your craft.

Re: 1x Programming

#150

Post by karmakaze »

You don't get to be an Nx programmer by working N times harder or longer. You probably have a diverse background of experience and well versed in applying knowledge from one area in another, and general creative problem solving.

I certainly don't work 2x more than other devs on my team and perhaps less than 1x on many days. I do try to stay sharp in terms of what I'm doing, why it's being done, and on the lookout for alternative means of achieving the same or related ends. I'm sure that there's many times I've worked 2x harder, longer and produced 0.5x results in a complex and contrived process that I thought was more interesting, better in some vague way, or had great potential, only to find it should be trashed and done the 1x way. Sometimes though that informal R&D pays off in other circumstances. I do this because the 8 hours I spend working goes by much easier and I don't feel tired at the end of the day doing something I feel is ineffective.

I haven't even done this for advancement in my career although it's a major factor that's considered when praising 1x. To each their own.

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