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The Parable of the Two Programmers (1985)

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Re: The Parable of the Two Programmers (1985)

#151

Post by PhoenixWright »

I can't wait to get out of software development.

I'm just a couple of years removed from uni and I'm already planning my exit. My first corporate job was a huge eye-opener. This type of stuff left and right with zero career advancement and complete disdain from corporate.

I'm not even thirty and I plan on retiring and starting my own business (tech or other) by the time I'm 40. The only good thing about tech is that I can actually find a job and that the pay is above average giving me the opportunity to take the money and run!

It's a complete shame too because I enjoy solving problems through code. I love learning about new technologies. But everywhere I look software developers are completely screwed, absolute wasteland of an industry.

Re: The Parable of the Two Programmers (1985)

#152

Post by ctchocula »

jackweirdy wrote: post #95
alephnil wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this story had happened in real life, and the problem had been more complicated than anticipated, and Charlie had realized this, it would be likely to fail, because he did not have enough leverage toward the upper management to get the resources required to succeed, so in that case the project would be likely to fail, or at least be severely delayed. However, Alan was making the problem more complicated by introdu…

> ... and Charlie had realized this, it would be likely to fail, because he did not have enough leverage toward the upper management to get the resources required to succeed Not to mention, the company will be paying Alan and his team much more than they’re paying Charles. It’s my suspicion that people will give more weight to people they’re paying more, simply because they’re perceived as more valuable - independent…

I read an study testing an idea similar to yours, but with wine. They organized a study in the guise of a wine tasting event where there were 3 bottles of wine, but 2 bottles were marked up (one from $5 -> $50 and another from $10 -> $90). Even though people didn't know they were tasting the same wine, they said the the more expensive one tasted better. The other half of the study was with the prices removed, people couldn't guess the more expensive wine. The conclusion from the study was that "Individuals who are unaware of the price do not derive more enjoyment from more expensive wine."

Source: http://www.wired.com/2011/04/should-we-buy-expensive-wine/

Re: The Parable of the Two Programmers (1985)

#153

Post by tpg »

MRSallee wrote: post #145
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…

A couple of years ago, I locked myself out of the house. I called a locksmith, who showed up at the house surprisingly quickly. After spending a number of minutes fiddling with some impressive-looking lock picks and exercising what must be years of learned skill, he couldn't unlock the door. Sheepishly, he put away the specific tools and pulled out a dummy key + a rubber mallet. The locksmith put the dummy key into t…

If you're curious, the "dummy key" is a bump key. It's a relatively crude tool and is relatively hard on the lock, compared to traditional picking. There's also a certain level of professional pride, as you observed.

Hitting it with a mallet imparts force on the upper half of the pins, causing them all to briefly jump above the shear line, and at that moment the lock can turn freely without binding a pin.

A vibrating pick gun does essentially the same thing in a somewhat more controlled way.

Re: The Parable of the Two Programmers (1985)

#154

Post by aidenn0 »

PhoenixWright wrote: post #151

I can't wait to get out of software development. I'm just a couple of years removed from uni and I'm already planning my exit. My first corporate job was a huge eye-opener. This type of stuff left and right with zero career advancement and complete disdain from corporate. I'm not even thirty and I plan on retiring and starting my own business (tech or other) by the time I'm 40. The only good thing about tech is that…

This comment is more for others than for you, but there are good companies out there that are engineering focused. Almost none of them are corporations in which "software" is just one division of many,

Re: The Parable of the Two Programmers (1985)

#155

Post by ploxiln »

Periodic wrote: post #132

I dislike this strongly. It is attempting to demean a group of people without really giving them a fair chance. It exaggerates and vilifies the "enterprise programmer" while lionizing the young-but-inexperienced smart programmer. It's a very common theme here on HN. It's playing into the narrative of the young entrepreneur that can drop out of college and build the next successful start-up. The fact is that most peop…

This is indeed a comment-baity article. It is fiction, those two people didn't really exist and do those things. It gets programmers/developers riled up - because it's so believable.

It is indeed the case that the characters are vastly different in terms of skill, and that is sort of the point. Alan did spend time developing his skills, but it was focused on frameworks and processes, and not effective programming or problem solving. Maybe he just didn't have the right start, didn't know what he didn't know, and just went the wrong way from there. But management, and Alan himself, can't tell the difference.

I think that's the ultimate take-away. Non-programmers and "bad" programmers can't recognize good programming, even if they look at results. Well they can, but it takes a lot of time and luck to come across comparable situations. It seems like an intractable problem. They don't know who to trust; and there doesn't seem to be a way to find out for them, except to be genuinely good at developing software... but how to know which way to go about that?

Re: The Parable of the Two Programmers (1985)

#156

Post by sshumaker »

gaius wrote: post #103
swatow wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this is just an extreme example of the "don't try to be a smart guy" ideology. In practice 100-500 LOC per day is normal.

Firstly, any real working programmer has days where they write no code. You are writing documentation, meeting with users and sponsors to discuss new features and schedules, doing code-reviews and mentoring, merging branches, debugging race conditions, meeting vendors, chasing dependencies in other parts of the company, a million other things. That brings the average LOC/day down. I can't imagine anyone sustaining 10…

I have to disagree here. This is definitely possible, especially on more greenfield projects. Most of the engineers on my team produced that much sustained. And my average is closer to 400/day even though a big chunk of my time is spent doing things other than programming (e.g. tech leadership / management). LOC isn't a great metric though and can be easily gamed.

Re: The Parable of the Two Programmers (1985)

#158

Post by collyw »

V-2 wrote: post #142
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 have read somewhere (it could be apocryphal, although it makes sense) that for this very reason barbers tend to snip their scissors in the air a lot - to give off an impression that there's more work being done than there actually is...

I can confirm this happens in high end hairdressers.

I have never spent a lot on haircuts, and a few years ago when I was going from long to short hair (for a job interview), my mum offered to pay for an expensive haircut for me. The haircut was not really any "better" than many of the cheap ones I had paid for myself, but the hairdresser spent a lot more time, and there seemed to be a lot more faffing about, with no real purpose as far as I could see.

Most of the places I had gone to obviously needed a bit higher throughput to keep the money coming in.

Re: The Parable of the Two Programmers (1985)

#159

Post by collyw »

And if the specs change after the code was written (as usually happens in real life), who's code would have been easier to update? There is a reason experienced people may put more effort in to certain areas they junior programmers, they will have an idea what is likely to change and when.

Re: The Parable of the Two Programmers (1985)

#160

Post by BuildTheRobots »

NeverEnough wrote: post #150
BuildTheRobots wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One Friday afternoon in 1921, Steinmetz hopped in his electric car and headed off for a weekend at... Whu?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_car#Golden_age "In 1900, 40% of American automobiles were powered by steam, 38% by electricity, and 22% by gasoline.[19]"

Well, that's absolutely blown my mind -thank you.

Now I just want to know how they were dealing with power storage...

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