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There are no 10x developers, but there are 1/10 ones

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Re: There are no 10x developers, but there are 1/10 ones

#141

Post by jdlshore »

papsosouid wrote: post #137
jdlshore wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you read those references? Or are you just quoting them blindly? Laurent Bossavit has read them, and he reports that they are, for the most part, reporting on each other and on anecdotes. There is no actual, scientific evidence for the "10x programmer." He writes up his search for the evidence in his book "The Leprechauns of Software Development." It's a fascinating look at how a supposedly-rational group of peo…

What are you talking about? You should read those references. Just download peopleware for fuck's sake, rather than regurgitating bullshit. There is strong evidence that the most productive programmers are 10x as productive as the least productive programmers.

I've read Peopleware. Your mention of it is another example of the uncritical citation of references that Bossavit talks about in his book.

Peopleware isn't a scientific study. It's a collection of essays and opinions by two authors I have a great deal of respect for. The closest it gets to science is an un-sourced discussion of DeMarco and Lister's "Coding War Games." In that discussion, it specifically says that differences in productivity (which were less than 10x) were likely due to workplace factors, not individual productivity.

People constantly say that there's "strong evidence" supporting the 10x productivity, but no one ever quotes a scientific study that provides this evidence. At best, people list references, often without reading or understanding them--as you did with Peopleware.

There could well be a 10x difference in productivity, but gut feel and testosterone-fueled claims aren't the same as science.

(It's no surprise that there's no science backing the claim. In order to show evidence for a 10x difference in programmer productivity, you'd first have to define "programmer productivity" and come up with an unbiased measure of it. And that's surprisingly difficult, as some of the discussions in this thread have shown.)

Re: There are no 10x developers, but there are 1/10 ones

#142

Post by cunac »

nnq wrote: post #111

Because nobody wants to be called or to call himself a 1/10 developer! It's goddamn demeaning! And we're all at different points on the learning curves for different technologies, so we are all "1/10 developers" for some techs! But if you get the "1/10 developer" label for a technology that you end up working with but you've never touched before so you're running in the "learn on the job" mode, some will tend to mind…

If you are consultant it is implied that you are at least proficient in technology/tools you are using and learning on the job in that case is quite frankly immoral. Especially if you are not uprfront with your client about your suitability for job.

Re: There are no 10x developers, but there are 1/10 ones

#143

Post by papsosouid »

jdlshore wrote: post #141
papsosouid wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you talking about? You should read those references. Just download peopleware for fuck's sake, rather than regurgitating bullshit. There is strong evidence that the most productive programmers are 10x as productive as the least productive programmers.

I've read Peopleware. Your mention of it is another example of the uncritical citation of references that Bossavit talks about in his book. Peopleware isn't a scientific study. It's a collection of essays and opinions by two authors I have a great deal of respect for. The closest it gets to science is an un-sourced discussion of DeMarco and Lister's "Coding War Games." In that discussion, it specifically says that di…

>Your reference of it is another example of the uncritical waving of references that Bossavit talks about in his book.

He says, while uncritically waving a single reference that has no backing evidence. You seriously don't see your hypocrisy here?

>Peopleware isn't a scientific study

Duh? That is why it contains citations, to the studies the authors conducted. You sure did a poor job of reading it if you are actually that ignorant.

>In that discussion, it specifically says that differences in productivity (which were less than 10x) were likely due to workplace factors, not individual productivity.

No, they were 10x. That is precisely what it says. And why do you suggest workplace factors being part of the difference makes the difference not exist? I don't even understand how you can say something that absurd and not realize it.

>There could well be a 10x difference in productivity, but gut feel and testosterone-fueled claims aren't the same as science.

Ok, I'll just take your ignorance-fueled gut feel claim as proof that all the scientific evidence doesn't exist.

Re: There are no 10x developers, but there are 1/10 ones

#144

Post by orangethirty »

mattmanser wrote: post #123
boyter wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel I am in the same boat as you. I belive myself to be a very average (possibly less so) developer. Even believing that I cannot understand the amount of crap I have been forced to rewrite because it simply does not work. Just recently a expensive contractor was brought in to write a series of simple CRUD screens using .NET MVC and KendoUI. It appeared to work, but if you even scratched the surface you quickly di…

I don't mean this offensively, but this has a bit of a whiff of NIH syndrome. Rewriting and refactoring existing code is a lot easier and quicker than writing it the first time, even if it's someone else's. Unless you saw a massive drop in TLOC you were probably just rewriting it into your own style. Looking back on my own past, I am guilty of doing this myself more than once. And raw SQL vs the Entity Framework is n…

I thought about reasons for re-writing for 2 days. But the system is just not reliable or safe. I'm not re-writing it in one sitting, just replacing the buggy/unsafe code with good code until the system is stabilized. Then, and only then will I re-write. Though there are parts of the system that would work very well in Lisp. (:

Re: There are no 10x developers, but there are 1/10 ones

#145

Post by orangethirty »

shawabawa3 wrote: post #122
orangethirty wrote: post #35

I'm not a 10x programmer. Probably will never be. I do know of programmers who not only are slower in shipping, but are very bad at designing coherent programs and data structures. That's my main observation. It's not that I'm X times better, its that they are X times slower and make poor design choices. Why? My experience has shown that this tends to happen with people who stop keeping up to date and stop learning.…

>Yet, I don't want to call myself better, because most people here are better than me. Yet this leaves me with quite a strange view of everything. I'm not a great programmer, but I'm not as bad as those guys who worked at some big name place. Where does that leave me? Who knows. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect If you think you're bad, you're probably way above average :p

You are probably right. I just hate saying I'm better than that guy or that girl. Because programming is so complex, that I might be great at doing some things, while others might be great at doing others. Does that mean I'm better? No. That means I have to improve to learn what others do better than me. There is no way to talk about this without sounding weird. (:

Re: There are no 10x developers, but there are 1/10 ones

#146

Post by ctdonath »

ctdonath wrote: post #130
benaston wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fizzbuzz syndrome is real alright. But someone failing fizzbuzz is not an indicator that they will always be incapable of development. It just means they are very junior and require training. Frighteningly for the West, Indian and Chinese companies appear to grok this and actually develop their employees. US and UK companies throw their hands up in empty self-satisfaction that their work is so intellectually diff…

By the time you're evaluating someone with FizzBuzz, they're trying to convince you they have training and have developed from "very junior" (to wit untrained). FizzBuzz is the kind of test which should be a pass/fail final exam question for a 6-week Beginning Programming course, not something any degreed entry-level candidate would have trouble with. Can they be trained? sure. But when applying for jobs, they're exp…

Tangent:

The FizzBuzz question should really be "write me 3 versions of FizzBuzz, explain why they're different, and under what conditions would you use each over the others."

The fact that the FizzBuzz issue is a matter of whether the candidate can write it at all - and that so many interviewers don't view a "nope" answer as a full-stop red flag - indicates a baffling state of industry affairs.

Re: There are no 10x developers, but there are 1/10 ones

#147

Post by RockyMcNuts »

reeses wrote: post #135
RockyMcNuts wrote: post #26

If you ask me to design a programming language, I'm a 0 and van Rossum and Kernighan and Ritchie are some finite number, so they are infinity-x me. There are levels where people hit a wall. Some hit it at hello.c, some hit it at writing professional business logic with proper data structures, some hit it at assembly language or programming language design or operating systems. Anyone in over their head at any level i…

NO! You're not a 0 at designing a programming language. If you look at modern C++, you may think that it's impossible to design that language. TBH, I'd be incredibly surprised if the current standard is implemented on all of the major compiler platforms before the next standard is released. Remember one of the most important rules in programming and problem solving in general. If you can't see how to solve a problem,…

well... let's just say my 1985 PLT (programming languages and translators) class project didn't run after numerous all-nighters, and I got the grade that made the top 75% of the curve possible LOL. It's possible that another couple of weeks of all-nighters would have yielded something useful, or if I went back now I would get it...in a sense, any program with a few command line options defines a 'language'...still, pretty close to 0 in terms of a product that could be put in production or that someone would willingly pay for. Appreciate your comment though, nobody should consider themselves a zero at anything...with a just-do-it attitude you will always eventually create something useful...what one man can do another can do.

Re: There are no 10x developers, but there are 1/10 ones

#148

Post by jdlshore »

igouy wrote: post #131
jdlshore wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you read those references? Or are you just quoting them blindly? Laurent Bossavit has read them, and he reports that they are, for the most part, reporting on each other and on anecdotes. There is no actual, scientific evidence for the "10x programmer." He writes up his search for the evidence in his book "The Leprechauns of Software Development." It's a fascinating look at how a supposedly-rational group of peo…

Have you read those references? Or are you just quoting Laurent Bossavit blindly?

I've read and understood the reference I've provided (Bossavit), and I've also read and understood the reference justin_vanw provided (McConnell), so no, I'm not quoting Bossavit blindly.

After reading both, I found Bossavit much more convincing. In addition to meticulously following the chains of references back to the original research, Bossavit also examines how science is done and what is required in order for a claim to become established scientific fact. His conclusion is that the evidence for the 10x claim is "quite weak."

Here's my summary of his material from the last time this came up ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4118034 ). There's much more to Bossavit's research than my quotes here, so if you disagree, please read and rebut his work directly, not just these quotes.

"How strong is the support conferred to the 10x claim by the best-reputed list of references, for a reader persistent enough to follow the chain of citations back to primary sources?

"Based on our close reading of the “10x files”, we can now answer: quite weak.

"Not a single one of the references is to a replication, in the scientific sense of the term, of the original exploratory experiment.

"The empirical data is in general quite old, most if not all of it predating widespread use of the Internet - which we can safely expect to have wrought major changes in programming practice.

"None of the studies address the question of construct validity, that is, how meaningful it is to speak of an individual programmer’s productivity, and if it is meaningful, whether the experimental measurements line up adequately with that meaning." [1]

[1] The Leprechauns of Software Engineering explores what science is and how we distinguish between fact and folklore in software engineering. It specifically explores the 10x claim, and determines that it's folklore. http://leanpub.com/leprechauns

Re: There are no 10x developers, but there are 1/10 ones

#149

Post by vorg »

nhashem wrote: post #22

"x10 developers" are, in fact, proficient developers, who are experienced with their stack and problem domain. Well, I'd say this is only true for your typical corporate entity, where their products are basically just web applications that represent a state machine using some sort of database store for persistence (which is... basically everything). By the time the company has achieved some size, there's enough proce…

> are you in an environment where a 10x developer could actually demonstrate 10x productivity? At most companies, the answer is no, because a 10x engineer is doing in hours what takes people days, and nobody notices.

At most companies a 10x developer will be noticed by other developers. 10 of them will quietly agree to gang up on that 10x developer and backstab away because their own 10 jobs are threatened by that 1 person. Maybe it's just an unspoken agreement between developers all acting in their own interest.

If a 10x or 5x or 2x developer decides not to do things too quickly in a new job so as to "maintain good relations with other staff", they will still know. You won't find too many >1x developers around most businesses because they've all left to do something else, like a PhD program in the OP's case.

Re: There are no 10x developers, but there are 1/10 ones

#150

Post by boyter »

mattmanser wrote: post #123
boyter wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel I am in the same boat as you. I belive myself to be a very average (possibly less so) developer. Even believing that I cannot understand the amount of crap I have been forced to rewrite because it simply does not work. Just recently a expensive contractor was brought in to write a series of simple CRUD screens using .NET MVC and KendoUI. It appeared to work, but if you even scratched the surface you quickly di…

I don't mean this offensively, but this has a bit of a whiff of NIH syndrome. Rewriting and refactoring existing code is a lot easier and quicker than writing it the first time, even if it's someone else's. Unless you saw a massive drop in TLOC you were probably just rewriting it into your own style. Looking back on my own past, I am guilty of doing this myself more than once. And raw SQL vs the Entity Framework is n…

No that's fine. From the above it does sound like it.

Normally I would agree, but I really couldn't fix bugs in this code without re-factoring majorly. It really was that bad. I wouldn't have minded so much if we hadn't supplied the guy with a sample which showed how he should lay it out as well.

I may have gained a boost from his code (I did literally just scrub the codebase and reused a lot of had a change a heck of a lot too) but im certain I didn't gain 3 months from using what was delivered.

For the SQL portion we explicitly told him to use repository pattern using Entity Framework which he totally ignored this requirement. The moment I saw raw SQL in our models I really cracked it.

Of course the above could have been fixed with a decent peer review process but I could write chapters over what happened there. Suffice to say I saw the code once, made many requests of things to fix and was never invited to review it again.

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