Another Theory to Explain 10X Programmers • Hacker News Board

Re: Another Theory to Explain 10X Programmers

#21

Post by peter12355 » Mon, Jan 05, 2015, 12:42 PM UTC

olavgg wrote: post #18

devanti wrote: post #3

There are 10X programmers. I'll give an example. If you take an average programmer and "the best of the best" and ask them to build a relatively complex iOS app, of which neither has previous iOS experience, the best programmers WILL finish the task up to 10x faster than the average. This is because the average programmer gets stuck on bugs, solving problems, complexity, and is slower at learning new things. The bett…

Actually I believe almost everyone who is reading hacker news is a 10x programmer. It's really quite simple, the average IT person, especially in "enterprise" has very limited knowledge, but they do know some programming. Either in Cobol, Basic, ASP or Excel. Their job is to solve problems, but they're not really interested in their work. A job is a job, not a hobby. They have never heard about system automation, sti…

I wish it would be like that but my experience is that even average IT people are quite interested in what they do. (I'm still a student so my sample size is not that big).

Re: Another Theory to Explain 10X Programmers

#22

Post by LaSEctOc » Mon, Jan 05, 2015, 12:47 PM UTC

qznc wrote: post #8

devanti wrote: post #3

There are 10X programmers. I'll give an example. If you take an average programmer and "the best of the best" and ask them to build a relatively complex iOS app, of which neither has previous iOS experience, the best programmers WILL finish the task up to 10x faster than the average. This is because the average programmer gets stuck on bugs, solving problems, complexity, and is slower at learning new things. The bett…

The scientific evidence [0] compares to "worst" for 10X, not "average". [0] http://www.construx.com/10x_Software_Development/Origins_of_...

In my experience, the worst programmers have negative productivity. 10X programmers must be real monsters.

Re: Another Theory to Explain 10X Programmers

#23

Post by jonaldomo » Mon, Jan 05, 2015, 12:48 PM UTC

olavgg wrote: post #18

devanti wrote: post #3

There are 10X programmers. I'll give an example. If you take an average programmer and "the best of the best" and ask them to build a relatively complex iOS app, of which neither has previous iOS experience, the best programmers WILL finish the task up to 10x faster than the average. This is because the average programmer gets stuck on bugs, solving problems, complexity, and is slower at learning new things. The bett…

Actually I believe almost everyone who is reading hacker news is a 10x programmer. It's really quite simple, the average IT person, especially in "enterprise" has very limited knowledge, but they do know some programming. Either in Cobol, Basic, ASP or Excel. Their job is to solve problems, but they're not really interested in their work. A job is a job, not a hobby. They have never heard about system automation, sti…

I agree. It reminds me of parenting, if you are thinking about how you can be a better parent, you are already ahead of the pack.

Re: Another Theory to Explain 10X Programmers

#24

Post by TeMPOraL » Mon, Jan 05, 2015, 12:49 PM UTC

I like this theory, seems to fit my experience and intuition much more than the "innate ability" kinds.

But then again, I'm a weird kind of programmer. I'm a 10X+ programmer when working on my own stuff, or some challenge, basically for fun. Start paying me or expecting me to deliver, and my productivity drops to 0.1X. I've been unsuccessfully trying to figure that out for years and fix my work productivity, with little result. I feel like I'm wired to be obligation-averse. The moment I have to do something instead of just wanting to, I lose all my skills.

Re: Another Theory to Explain 10X Programmers

#25

Post by adekok » Mon, Jan 05, 2015, 12:52 PM UTC

danieltillett wrote: post #13

Do we really know what the average programmer actually produces? We are all biased when deciding what is average as we use those around us to decide what is average - if we are surrounded by great programmers then our average is much higher than if we are surrounded by poor programmers. The other complication is the intellectual energy hurdle that each problem brings. Some problems can only be solved by a small perce…

> Do we really know what the average programmer actually produces?

Industry average is 2,000 lines of code per programmer per year.

I've regularly produced 10x to 40x that amount. Others I've talked to have done the same.

The difference between "low volume" and "high volume" programmers is usually pretty stark. My experience is that it's not so much experience as problem solving skills.

If you have a good understanding of the problem, you can come up with the correct solution, and move on to another problem. If you don't understand the problem, you'll work for weeks and get nowhere.

There's also a methodical approach. As an anecdote, I once had to use a script from another developer in the same company. It just didn't work. Paths hard-coded to his home directory (for a script supposedly used in the test suite), etc. I spent 3 days fixing it, and told him it had problems because it had no error checking.

His response? "I don't have time to write error checks."

My response was "WTF? I don't have time to not write error checks."

The 10x programmer has a fundamentally different approach to programming than the bad programmer.

Re: Another Theory to Explain 10X Programmers

#26

Post by akx » Mon, Jan 05, 2015, 12:52 PM UTC

7952 wrote: post #16

devanti wrote: post #3

There are 10X programmers. I'll give an example. If you take an average programmer and "the best of the best" and ask them to build a relatively complex iOS app, of which neither has previous iOS experience, the best programmers WILL finish the task up to 10x faster than the average. This is because the average programmer gets stuck on bugs, solving problems, complexity, and is slower at learning new things. The bett…

Maybe these 10X programmers can quickly solve bugs and problems because they have faced similar issues before and spent the time nesseccary to understand the problem. In that case the important lesson is to limit the amount of novelty in your work so that you are mostly building on technologies you understand well.

In which case you'll probably inevitably end up building something with a suboptimal stack -- and limiting novelty also means you won't learn anything _new_, which sounds more terrible to me.

Re: Another Theory to Explain 10X Programmers

#27

Post by jmvoodoo » Mon, Jan 05, 2015, 12:54 PM UTC

danieltillett wrote: post #13

Do we really know what the average programmer actually produces? We are all biased when deciding what is average as we use those around us to decide what is average - if we are surrounded by great programmers then our average is much higher than if we are surrounded by poor programmers. The other complication is the intellectual energy hurdle that each problem brings. Some problems can only be solved by a small perce…

The best way to solve a problem is not to have it in the first place. Great programmers aren't better at dealing with complexity, they are better at reducing non inherent complexity and finding ways to break inherent complexity down into pieces that are easy to reason about. That takes experience and dedication to the craft. The latter I think is a huge difference between 10x programmers and others. The simple desire to be the best you can is a powerful force.

Re: Another Theory to Explain 10X Programmers

#28

Post by tomp » Mon, Jan 05, 2015, 12:56 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #24

I like this theory, seems to fit my experience and intuition much more than the "innate ability" kinds. But then again, I'm a weird kind of programmer. I'm a 10X+ programmer when working on my own stuff, or some challenge, basically for fun. Start paying me or expecting me to deliver, and my productivity drops to 0.1X. I've been unsuccessfully trying to figure that out for years and fix my work productivity, with lit…

I agree. I'm assuming there are many 10X programmers; unfortunately, there are not many 10X problems (or at least, not commercially viable ones - for example, I'm developing a programming language, but I don't see any chance of it being a commercial success, so I only do it in my free time).

Re: Another Theory to Explain 10X Programmers

#29

Post by alkonaut » Mon, Jan 05, 2015, 12:58 PM UTC

A sports analogy appeared in yesterday's HN thread on this topic: the difference between an average runner and the fastest man alive is less than 50%. The counter argument here is that the measurable variable here isn't really the skill of the programmer but the success of the company (or equivalent). You only have to be best by a small margin to win. If you count wins between me and Usain Bolt he would be more than 10x as successful. Now you could argue that a lot of programming is just factory work; you can complete it in 20% longer time and your salary is lower by some factor. The truth is somewhere in between: a company with developers and other staff that are better than their competition by some factor, will go on to be a successful company a lot more often than others. The measurable business result could be thousands of times better. So what is being measured? We can't measure "skill" separate from experience, but even as a compound the interesting measure is the success of what you produce. If your product or service is earlier on the market or slightly better, you might have 10x the return of the "average".

Re: Another Theory to Explain 10X Programmers

#30

Post by namplaa » Mon, Jan 05, 2015, 12:58 PM UTC

spacecowboy_lon wrote: post #12

sp4ke wrote: post #5

Completely agree on this. I don't believe in innate talent. I believe we are all born with the same willpower to acquire knowledge. Some people will be ok with not mastering any specific skill as long as it does the job. Others who are "passionate" about certain fields or skills will try to learn as much as possible. So "passion" is a better word to define people's skills. I'm in the latter category, many people ask…

Not sure I agree I am dyslexic and I simply do not have all the inate skills that non disabled peopel have eg I have to work hard to spell of "of" and not "ov" But on the gripping hand I had a reading age of 18 or so at 10 - Average for population is 13 :-)

Don't people with dyslexia have other inane skills, such as better spatial perception?