There are no 10x developers, but there are 1/10 ones • Hacker News Board

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

#161

Post by jdlshore » Sun, Apr 07, 2013, 6:16 AM UTC

igouy wrote: post #155

jdlshore wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. Please provide a copy of Bossavit's research.

I was using "research" in the colloquial sense, not in the "research paper" sense. Bossavit researched the 10x claims (thoroughly and meticulously) and wrote up his findings in the book I mentioned. You can find it here: http://leanpub.com/leprechauns

It's an impressive work of scholarship; many of the citations he followed were out of print, expensive, or referring to unnamed parts of 300-page books. Luckily for us, Bossavit's write-up is engaging and accessible.

It isn't free, but it's trivially inexpensive (US$5-10) if you care about this subject. Far cheaper than the source material.

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

#162

Post by jqjester » Sun, Apr 07, 2013, 11:04 AM UTC

igouy wrote: post #160

jqjester wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steve McConnell himself doesn't dispute Bossavit's claims about the earlier studies (for the most part), he just disagrees about the significance of those claims. See McConnell's rebuttal in which he acknowledges the methodological weaknesses of the citations: http://www.construx.com/10x_Software_Development/Origins_of_... .

What specifically are you pointing to within that blog post and comment stream? (Let's make sure I look at exactly what you mean me to see.)

Sure - I'm pointing to the section titled "A Deeper Dive into the Research Supporting '10x'".

I'm accepting one of Bossavit's claims on trust: he says that of McConnell's eight citations in support of the 10x claim, only two were original research based on empirical studies under controlled conditions (and of those two one only concerned debugging).

I'm willing to trust that because it looks like McConnell mostly agrees. For example, regarding the 1986 Curtis paper, McConnell writes "Bossavit states that, “the 1986 Curtis article does not report on an empirical study.” I never stated that Curtis 1986 was an 'empirical study.'" Regarding DeMarco and Lister, he says "Editorial insinuations aside, that is a correct description of what DeMarco and Lister reported, both in the paper I cited and in Peopleware. Their 1985 study had some of the methodological limitations Sheil’s discussed in 1981".

They disagree about what counts as evidence supporting the 10x claim, but apart from the Card 1987 citation (about which Bassavit was wrong), McConnell confirms Bossavit's claims about every citation.

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

#163

Post by papsosouid » Mon, Apr 08, 2013, 1:23 PM UTC

gruseom wrote: post #159

papsosouid wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

Whoa there. You are being way too rude and aggressive about this. Please help keep HN civil; that's much more important than any argument. Peopleware is a classic, or at least many software professionals regard it that way, but it is a classic of folklore rather than science. Here is an example that I asked one of the authors about years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=1995716 . The research literature itse…

Perhaps if you don't like the dozens of studies, you could offer a critical response to them rather than ignoring their existence no matter how often they are pointed to?

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

#164

Post by igouy » Mon, Apr 08, 2013, 5:13 PM UTC

jdlshore wrote: post #161

igouy wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Please provide a copy of Bossavit's research.

I was using "research" in the colloquial sense, not in the "research paper" sense. Bossavit researched the 10x claims (thoroughly and meticulously) and wrote up his findings in the book I mentioned. You can find it here: http://leanpub.com/leprechauns It's an impressive work of scholarship; many of the citations he followed were out of print, expensive, or referring to unnamed parts of 300-page books. Luckily for us,…

> It isn't free

And isn't available in any of the linked libraries available to me.

And I already had a long email discussion with Laurent back in 2011, about his comments on Steve McConnell's blog.

If I may make a suggestion, when the source material is likely to be unavailable, it might be better to quote the reasons given rather than the conclusions -- then we can try to follow the reasoning rather than having to take someone's conclusions at face value.

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

#165

Post by jdlshore » Mon, Apr 08, 2013, 8:52 PM UTC

igouy wrote: post #164

jdlshore wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was using "research" in the colloquial sense, not in the "research paper" sense. Bossavit researched the 10x claims (thoroughly and meticulously) and wrote up his findings in the book I mentioned. You can find it here: http://leanpub.com/leprechauns It's an impressive work of scholarship; many of the citations he followed were out of print, expensive, or referring to unnamed parts of 300-page books. Luckily for us,…

> It isn't free And isn't available in any of the linked libraries available to me. And I already had a long email discussion with Laurent back in 2011, about his comments on Steve McConnell's blog. If I may make a suggestion, when the source material is likely to be unavailable, it might be better to quote the reasons given rather than the conclusions -- then we can try to follow the reasoning rather than having to…

I don't understand what you're getting at here. Laurent's book (written after McConnell's blog) is available at http://leanpub.com/leprechauns . If you're unable or unwilling to figure that out, I suspect you're not really trying.

You're engaging in an asymmetric attack here--posting trivial statements that avoid the substance of my comments, but require me to do a lot of work to satisfy you. I've replied to your comments in good faith. Now the onus is on you.

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

#166

Post by igouy » Mon, Apr 08, 2013, 9:53 PM UTC

jdlshore wrote: post #165

igouy wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It isn't free And isn't available in any of the linked libraries available to me. And I already had a long email discussion with Laurent back in 2011, about his comments on Steve McConnell's blog. If I may make a suggestion, when the source material is likely to be unavailable, it might be better to quote the reasons given rather than the conclusions -- then we can try to follow the reasoning rather than having to…

I don't understand what you're getting at here. Laurent's book (written after McConnell's blog) is available at http://leanpub.com/leprechauns . If you're unable or unwilling to figure that out, I suspect you're not really trying. You're engaging in an asymmetric attack here--posting trivial statements that avoid the substance of my comments, but require me to do a lot of work to satisfy you. I've replied to your com…

Unwilling to pay the $5.

> You're engaging in an asymmetric attack here I wasn't engaging in any kind-of attack, just making a suggestion.

You said -- "if you disagree, please read and rebut his work directly, not just these quotes" -- so, as I haven't read the book, I haven't tried to rebut those quotes.

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

#167

Post by igouy » Mon, Apr 08, 2013, 10:57 PM UTC

jqjester wrote: post #162

igouy wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What specifically are you pointing to within that blog post and comment stream? (Let's make sure I look at exactly what you mean me to see.)

Sure - I'm pointing to the section titled "A Deeper Dive into the Research Supporting '10x'". I'm accepting one of Bossavit's claims on trust: he says that of McConnell's eight citations in support of the 10x claim, only two were original research based on empirical studies under controlled conditions (and of those two one only concerned debugging). I'm willing to trust that because it looks like McConnell mostly agr…

I've just read through the McConnell post and the comment stream, and your comment that "McConnell confirms Bossavit's claims about every citation" baffles me :-)

"Curtis 1986. ... Bossavit says the paper “offers no support for the ‘10x’ claim.” But the first paragraph in section II.A. of the paper (p. 1093) summarizes 4 studies with the overall gist of the studies being that there are very large differences in productivity among programmers. The specific numbers cited are 28:1 and 23:1 differences."

I don't see how that can be described as McConnell confirming Bossavit's claims?

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

#168

Post by igouy » Tue, Apr 09, 2013, 5:20 PM UTC

jqjester wrote: post #162

igouy wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What specifically are you pointing to within that blog post and comment stream? (Let's make sure I look at exactly what you mean me to see.)

Sure - I'm pointing to the section titled "A Deeper Dive into the Research Supporting '10x'". I'm accepting one of Bossavit's claims on trust: he says that of McConnell's eight citations in support of the 10x claim, only two were original research based on empirical studies under controlled conditions (and of those two one only concerned debugging). I'm willing to trust that because it looks like McConnell mostly agr…

> Regarding DeMarco and Lister...

After the words you quote, McConnell goes on to say -- "Having said that, their study supports the 10x claim in spades and is not subject to many of the more common methodological weaknesses present in other software engineering studies."

After the words you quote, McConnell goes on to say -- "Bossavit should have looked at the paper I cited, not the book. The paper shows a 5.6x difference between the best and worst programmers—among the programmers who finished the assignment. About 10% of the programmers weren’t able to complete the assignment at all."

I don't see how that can be described as McConnell mostly agrees?

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

#169

Post by jqjester » Wed, Apr 10, 2013, 7:10 PM UTC

igouy wrote: post #168

jqjester wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure - I'm pointing to the section titled "A Deeper Dive into the Research Supporting '10x'". I'm accepting one of Bossavit's claims on trust: he says that of McConnell's eight citations in support of the 10x claim, only two were original research based on empirical studies under controlled conditions (and of those two one only concerned debugging). I'm willing to trust that because it looks like McConnell mostly agr…

> Regarding DeMarco and Lister... After the words you quote, McConnell goes on to say -- "Having said that, their study supports the 10x claim in spades and is not subject to many of the more common methodological weaknesses present in other software engineering studies." After the words you quote, McConnell goes on to say -- "Bossavit should have looked at the paper I cited, not the book. The paper shows a 5.6x diff…

I was originally responding to the challenge "aren't you taking Bossavit's claims on trust?"

I'm differentiating between Bossavit's claims about the citations from Bossavit's analysis and arguments. I have to take his claims about the articles and books on trust, because I haven't read them. On the other hand, I don't have to trust his analysis and arguments - I can evaluate those on my own.

In the case of DeMarco and Lister, for example, Bossavit writes "the only 'studies' reported on therein are the programming contests organized by the authors, which took place under loosely controlled conditions (participants were to tackle the exercises at their workplace and concurrently with their work as professional programmers)"

That's the only claim that I have to trust here. Everything else is analysis. McConnell agrees with that description of the citation, but disagrees that it invalidates DeMarco and Lister's research. He thinks that a programming contest that took place under loosely controlled conditions is a legitimate research study.

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

#170

Post by jqjester » Wed, Apr 10, 2013, 7:43 PM UTC

igouy wrote: post #167

jqjester wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure - I'm pointing to the section titled "A Deeper Dive into the Research Supporting '10x'". I'm accepting one of Bossavit's claims on trust: he says that of McConnell's eight citations in support of the 10x claim, only two were original research based on empirical studies under controlled conditions (and of those two one only concerned debugging). I'm willing to trust that because it looks like McConnell mostly agr…

I've just read through the McConnell post and the comment stream, and your comment that "McConnell confirms Bossavit's claims about every citation" baffles me :-) "Curtis 1986. ... Bossavit says the paper “offers no support for the ‘10x’ claim.” But the first paragraph in section II.A. of the paper (p. 1093) summarizes 4 studies with the overall gist of the studies being that there are very large differences in produ…

Again, McConnell isn't disagreeing with Bossavit's claims about the Curtis 1986 citation. He concurs! "I never stated that Curtis 1986 was an 'empirical study.' Curtis 1986 is a broad paper that touches on, among other things, differences in programmer productivity. "

The difference is that McConnell thinks that summarizing four studies "offers support for the 10x claim" and Bossavit does not. That's a matter of analysis & evidentiary standards.