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The worst programmer I know

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Re: The worst programmer I know

#51

Post by 88913527 »

closewith wrote: post #23
88913527 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's a bogus argument. The productive person doesn't need a paper weight at lunch to act as a shower thought generator. Management can get it wrong sometimes, but in broad strokes, they're right.

Maybe, or maybe human endeavour is more complex than individual efforts.

It's tough, but what I've seen is low performers weigh the team down. They constantly ask for the high performer's time, and if we give them bug tickets, new feature work, they constantly stumble and always report status as blocked. They don't add value. They can't get to the finish line with anything. It's not a kind thing to point out, but trying to angle it as "oh there's this other benefit you're just not seeing" is trying to work around the fact they can't competently fulfill the job function after exhausting all of our options (training, pair programming, etc). They might be friendly people, but the social boosts don't counteract the losses incurred, it's still a net loss.

Re: The worst programmer I know

#52

Post by jamestimmins »

Erikun wrote: post #25
jamestimmins wrote: post #4

Reminds me of an anecdote about Bell Labs. Someone calculated who the most productive employees were (based on things like patents received), and found that many of them would eat lunch with the same person. That person wasn't individually very productive, but he would always ask thoughtful, compelling questions that in turn made his coworkers measurably more productive.

It might be from the great book The Idea Factory by Jon Gertner (p 135). 'In the midst of Shannon’s career, some lawyers in the patent department at Bell Labs decided to study whether there was an organizing principle that could explain why certain individuals at the Labs were more productive than others. They discerned only one common thread: Workers with the most patents often shared lunch or breakfast with a Bell…

Yeah that's the one! Thanks for finding the reference.

Re: The worst programmer I know

#53

Post by Waterluvian »

I’ve met a lot of project managers who are competent and see the bigger picture. They actually pay attention and understand why the numbers are what they are. They respect that the numbers are a very flawed tool and cannot be utilized without context or understanding.

I’ve also met a lot of project managers who are there because they’re incompetent. They lean heavily on “agile” and “best practices” and say moronic stuff like, “can you show me how many lines of code each developer has added this month?” (this happened to me. I fought it hard, explaining that it’s not a meaningful metric. I showed him a month that I wrote -1500 lines of code).

I feel like I could say the same about managers, coders, executives. The incompetent exist everywhere and they lean heavily on bureaucracy to protect their existence.

Re: The worst programmer I know

#54

Post by Fluorescence »

kstrauser wrote: post #16
roenxi wrote: post #7

I dislike the just-so aspect of these sort of stories. I'd expect exceptional programmers to do unusually well on most metrics. But that is balanced by the threat of people trying to use metrics to measure developer productivity. It doesn't seem to be possible, any metric falls apart. If people are focusing on a metric, the greats aren't going to be leading any more. It'll be some junior who has misunderstood the sys…

> I'd expect exceptional programmers to do unusually well on most metrics. ...when they're actually hands-on-keyboard writing software. The best programmers I know write as little code as possible. Product team: Hmm, we need to do a thing that looks very complex and difficult. Senior dev: I'll start making a project plan and story breakdown. Very senior dev: That sounds like a special case of a thing we already have.…

> Very senior dev: ... that should take about an hour.

Red flag!

Re: The worst programmer I know

#55

Post by agumonkey »

Erikun wrote: post #25
jamestimmins wrote: post #4

Reminds me of an anecdote about Bell Labs. Someone calculated who the most productive employees were (based on things like patents received), and found that many of them would eat lunch with the same person. That person wasn't individually very productive, but he would always ask thoughtful, compelling questions that in turn made his coworkers measurably more productive.

It might be from the great book The Idea Factory by Jon Gertner (p 135). 'In the midst of Shannon’s career, some lawyers in the patent department at Bell Labs decided to study whether there was an organizing principle that could explain why certain individuals at the Labs were more productive than others. They discerned only one common thread: Workers with the most patents often shared lunch or breakfast with a Bell…

You also need a fertile soil. In many many places, curiosity, exploration is passively frowned upon.

Re: The worst programmer I know

#56

Post by dharmab »

dmoy wrote: post #49
dharmab wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've written several 100ks LOC/year at points in my career- but exclusively when working on new projects. When maintaining projects I might go a week at a time without writing any code solo, or I might spend a week trying to _reduce_ LOC.

I think my net contribution of lines of code at my current company is still negative. It was for a long time, but I haven't checked in awhile so I'm not sure if it still is.

Usually I end up adding more lines of documentation and tests and removing lines of application code so it's not easily measurable- on theme for this thread, heh

Re: The worst programmer I know

#57

Post by allenrb »

dmoy wrote: post #49
dharmab wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've written several 100ks LOC/year at points in my career- but exclusively when working on new projects. When maintaining projects I might go a week at a time without writing any code solo, or I might spend a week trying to _reduce_ LOC.

I think my net contribution of lines of code at my current company is still negative. It was for a long time, but I haven't checked in awhile so I'm not sure if it still is.

I remember times at a few of my jobs, just absolutely cheering for someone’s PR that was filled with red. Good times.

Re: The worst programmer I know

#58

Post by scruple »

dharmab wrote: post #31
closewith wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a remote world, can that person exist?

I am one of those people and work a fully remote job, but I had to earn that credibility with years of being a top contributor first. It would be difficult to just walk into the role.

I wrote a sibling comment alluding to the same, having been that person across a few different employers now. The struggles I had certainly, to a large degree, boiled down to a lack of trust (walking into a new team/department/company is hard on both sides!), but that wasn't the full story. IMO, management needs to have the right mindset to establish culture, too.

Re: The worst programmer I know

#59

Post by greenyouse »

closewith wrote: post #22
jongjong wrote: post #18

It sucks being that person today because everything is about optics and that person will get purged. I know from experience. Team players, mentors, software architects; they tend to be tossed aside to make room for coders who can churn out large amounts of code, even as the company's capacity to deliver and maintain features declines over time due to tech debt. Managers always love a developer who can consistently wr…

In a remote world, can that person exist?

That would depend on the culture of your team and larger workplace. Healthy teams should be checking in frequently to talk about ideas, reviewing big things, scoping upcoming work, etc. If there's time reserved for deeply technical but loosely structured discussion like that, then everybody takes turns being that person. In that env someone could "specialize" in it and help inspire others to do great work.

It's the team that creates that kind of opportunity for feedback though. If the team has dysfunctions like rejecting deeper discussion or not working beyond jira tickets or checking out at meetings, etc. then it's not going to work. Someone that's good at that kind of supporting discussion will feel push back when fostering those discussions so it will fall off over time.

The teams that do the best work and are the most fun to be on can host those types of discussions though, even remotely. It's worth experiencing if you haven't!

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