The Parable of the Two Programmers (1985) • Hacker News Board

Re: The Parable of the Two Programmers (1985)

#41

Post by knodi123 » Sun, Jan 25, 2015, 8:08 AM UTC

raldi wrote: post #31

thaumaturgy wrote: post #23

Oh god, this thing's actually getting traction here. Look, there's no moral to this story and very little to glean from it because it's about a situation that's ridiculous on its face. It's written to appeal to cowboy programmers to make them feel better about their prejudices in software development. Can any of you actually relate a real-world case where a 4-month-long team-driven effort produced some code to solve…

Yes. I worked at a company that spent hundreds of thousands of dollars, and nearly a year, on a server monitoring system that never acheived a high enough timeseries resolution to actually solve the problem it was funded for. Then a 20-year veteran of the company stepped in and wrote a 50-line shell script, pushed it to the relevant machines, plugged it into the timeseries database, and solved the problem. He called…

wouldn't be the first time I've seen a shell script outperform an overengineered solution

Re: The Parable of the Two Programmers (1985)

#42

Post by aidenn0 » Sun, Jan 25, 2015, 8:08 AM UTC

jebediah wrote: post #4

Wow, as someone who is going to start doing Computer Science next year, I had already heard that most of programming is about thinking, but had no idea that is was to the point of 5 lines of code per day being exceptional.

Remember that you will spend more time debugging, documenting and testing your code. And this is if you work somewhere that doesn't expect you to spend 10+ hours a week in meetings.

[edit] And you will also write a lot of code you throw away; sometimes you need to solve 90% of the problem the wrong way to discover the right way.

Re: The Parable of the Two Programmers (1985)

#43

Post by rachelbythebay » Sun, Jan 25, 2015, 8:10 AM UTC

anaolykarpov wrote: post #35

There was a MOOC on Coursera called "Irrational Behaviour" and one of the stories there is about a locksmith who in the beginning of his career used to fix a door lock in more than an hour, with lots of effort and almost always destroying the door. His clients were happy to pay him the 70 dollars he charged for the operation and also tipped him most of the time. As time went by and his experience increased he got to…

I hit this on HN a couple of years ago:

http://www.90percentofeverything.com/2010/12/16/adding-delay...

I also wrote about it. It's real. Many customers are not happy if you make it seem too easy.

Re: The Parable of the Two Programmers (1985)

#44

Post by jkot » Sun, Jan 25, 2015, 8:13 AM UTC

thaumaturgy wrote: post #23

Oh god, this thing's actually getting traction here. Look, there's no moral to this story and very little to glean from it because it's about a situation that's ridiculous on its face. It's written to appeal to cowboy programmers to make them feel better about their prejudices in software development. Can any of you actually relate a real-world case where a 4-month-long team-driven effort produced some code to solve…

I know this story for perhaps ten years and it is one of my favorites.

> Can any of you actually relate a real-world

I know about 5 cases. I have been on both sides of this story. Plus there are similar cases outside of programming.

Lets just call it luck, shall we?

Re: The Parable of the Two Programmers (1985)

#45

Post by Iv » Sun, Jan 25, 2015, 8:15 AM UTC

anaolykarpov wrote: post #35

There was a MOOC on Coursera called "Irrational Behaviour" and one of the stories there is about a locksmith who in the beginning of his career used to fix a door lock in more than an hour, with lots of effort and almost always destroying the door. His clients were happy to pay him the 70 dollars he charged for the operation and also tipped him most of the time. As time went by and his experience increased he got to…

> Conclusion: we don't want to pay related to the value we receive for a certain service, but to the amount of effort involved in the delivery of that service.

But is that irrational? This seems to be a personal preference. By refusing to pay the same price for 10 minutes of work or one hour of work, we assert that we do believe in a certain income equality. "Disturbing someone for one hour vs 10 minutes" is not a necessarily irrational way to look at the situation.

Re: The Parable of the Two Programmers (1985)

#46

Post by raldi » Sun, Jan 25, 2015, 8:15 AM UTC

thaumaturgy wrote: post #36

raldi wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. I worked at a company that spent hundreds of thousands of dollars, and nearly a year, on a server monitoring system that never acheived a high enough timeseries resolution to actually solve the problem it was funded for. Then a 20-year veteran of the company stepped in and wrote a 50-line shell script, pushed it to the relevant machines, plugged it into the timeseries database, and solved the problem. He called…

Eww. Were there extenuating factors though? The monitoring system was somebody's pet project, or was purchased under contract on the hopes and dreams of sales, or the monitoring software did work but not in that specific environment, or...?

IMHO, the person selected to run the original project was a beneficiary of the Peter Principle, and on top of that, left the company before the project was completed. I wasn't directly involved, but I specifically remember the hero of the story complaining about having been "sold a bill of goods" -- i.e., the company was promised the new system would perform screamingly, but when push came to shove, it didn't.

Re: The Parable of the Two Programmers (1985)

#47

Post by greenyoda » Sun, Jan 25, 2015, 8:16 AM UTC

kylec wrote: post #20

[deleted] wrote: post #18

[deleted]

I don't know, maybe it took quite a bit of time and thinking to realize that the problem was simpler than it seemed. Maybe Charles was playing games to occupy his eyes and hands while he was thinking about the problem.

"I don't know, maybe it took quite a bit of time and thinking to realize that the problem was simpler than it seemed."

That's also how I interpreted it (based on personal experience).

"Maybe Charles was playing games to occupy his eyes and hands while he was thinking about the problem."

Or he may have been playing games while taking a break from thinking.

Re: The Parable of the Two Programmers (1985)

#48

Post by javert » Sun, Jan 25, 2015, 8:18 AM UTC

Iv wrote: post #45

anaolykarpov wrote: post #35

There was a MOOC on Coursera called "Irrational Behaviour" and one of the stories there is about a locksmith who in the beginning of his career used to fix a door lock in more than an hour, with lots of effort and almost always destroying the door. His clients were happy to pay him the 70 dollars he charged for the operation and also tipped him most of the time. As time went by and his experience increased he got to…

> Conclusion: we don't want to pay related to the value we receive for a certain service, but to the amount of effort involved in the delivery of that service. But is that irrational? This seems to be a personal preference. By refusing to pay the same price for 10 minutes of work or one hour of work, we assert that we do believe in a certain income equality. "Disturbing someone for one hour vs 10 minutes" is not a ne…

No, people get angry at being charged $70 for 10 minutes of work because they think they're getting cheated, even though in this case they aren't.

You're not going to find your rationalization for socialism here.

Re: The Parable of the Two Programmers (1985)

#49

Post by anaolykarpov » Sun, Jan 25, 2015, 8:20 AM UTC

Iv wrote: post #45

anaolykarpov wrote: post #35

There was a MOOC on Coursera called "Irrational Behaviour" and one of the stories there is about a locksmith who in the beginning of his career used to fix a door lock in more than an hour, with lots of effort and almost always destroying the door. His clients were happy to pay him the 70 dollars he charged for the operation and also tipped him most of the time. As time went by and his experience increased he got to…

> Conclusion: we don't want to pay related to the value we receive for a certain service, but to the amount of effort involved in the delivery of that service. But is that irrational? This seems to be a personal preference. By refusing to pay the same price for 10 minutes of work or one hour of work, we assert that we do believe in a certain income equality. "Disturbing someone for one hour vs 10 minutes" is not a ne…

It seems more rational to look at things as having your doorlock fixed, because that is why you call for the locksmith. You don't call just to see someone doing his job for the sake of it.

Re: The Parable of the Two Programmers (1985)

#50

Post by pm90 » Sun, Jan 25, 2015, 8:25 AM UTC

anaolykarpov wrote: post #35

There was a MOOC on Coursera called "Irrational Behaviour" and one of the stories there is about a locksmith who in the beginning of his career used to fix a door lock in more than an hour, with lots of effort and almost always destroying the door. His clients were happy to pay him the 70 dollars he charged for the operation and also tipped him most of the time. As time went by and his experience increased he got to…

It doesn't have to be amount of effort, even. In your example, the locksmith has so much experience, its easy for him to fix locks, so not much effort it required by him. But we do make this correlation between effort and time; so more time spent == more effort to our brain. That needs to change.