The programming talent myth • Hacker News Board

Re: The programming talent myth

#251

Post by bshimmin » Mon, May 04, 2015, 7:41 PM UTC

corbet wrote: post #64

bhauer wrote: post #35

Subscriber-only content. Does anyone feel a bit guilty for reading it without a subscription?

Indeed, I hope you feel overwhelmed by the sort of guilt that only purchasing a subscription can dispel. Inspiring such feelings was my motivation for posting the link in the first place :) (I'm the lead editor of LWN.net).

Is there anything that can be done to make LWN.net look a bit nicer? There's often very good and interesting content on there - for which I'm grateful! - but the presentation really is rather a throwback to the pre-CSS days.

Re: The programming talent myth

#252

Post by army » Mon, May 04, 2015, 7:41 PM UTC

The original version of the "10x" idea didn't require the productivity distribution to be bimodal - it could be a bell curve or skewed bell curve with high variance. I think it's contextual as well - if you're working on a project that's just at the edge of your present abilities, your productivity is going to be pretty marginal compared to someone who's done it before and has strong aptitude at it.

I think it's silly to simply sort programmers into two buckets.

It does make a lot of sense though to try to attract and retain good programmers though - having a programmer who's at the 75th percentile of productivity instead of the 50th percentile is going to give you a big boost in productivity if productivity is high variance. It also makes sense to try to match programmers to projects that they have good aptitude and motivation for.

Re: The programming talent myth

#253

Post by JoeAltmaier » Mon, May 04, 2015, 7:42 PM UTC

derekp7 wrote: post #249

xkjkls wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like a form of elitism very specific to programming. I graduated with a degree in Electrical Engineering, and barely did programming until I began my first job out of college. In many people in the programming space, I see contempt that coding was something I didn't start until later in life. When I interviewed for Electrical Engineering positions, no one ever scoffed at me, "you haven't been computing the…

I think it really comes down to how much enjoyment one gets out of programming. If you thoroughly enjoy the process, you are more likely to put in the time and effort (in fact it will feel effortless), and you will be thinking about it all the time. Then there are those who don't mind programming, or maybe even see it as a chore, but choose to do it anyway.

Yes! Like musicians that have tunes running through their head constantly. Or poets that turn every phrase over in their minds.

Did you ever dream of debugging your children? That if you could only find the right breakpoint to set, you could adjust them and fix something? Then you are truly a programmer.

Re: The programming talent myth

#254

Post by mikecmpbll » Mon, May 04, 2015, 7:45 PM UTC

Yet more programmer/tech industry denigration propped up by completely unproven assertions.

Firstly most of this is based on the idea that as a programmer you are only either great or shit, and that this is somehow a problem of the industry rather than just being something entirely human and normal in ANY WALK OF LIFE (the best and the rest).

Secondly, there's this awful assertion that this purported industry problem has resulted in a less diverse industry. (What does that even mean, other ethnicities & women can't handle pressure as well as white men?)

  But imagine how frustrating it must be to be a woman with a decade of experience
  and have someone assume that she doesn't know what she is talking about.

^ This just comes out of nowhere, someone assuming that a woman programmer "doesn't know what she is talking about" is not related to any point he's made previously.

Re: The programming talent myth

#255

Post by Goladus » Mon, May 04, 2015, 7:46 PM UTC

empressplay wrote: post #3

That programming is a talent is not a myth, and while my life is currently devoted to developing a platform to encourage more people to learn the basics of computer science, I will certainly never say "anyone can learn how to code" any more than I'd say "anyone can become a concert pianist" or "anyone can become a master painter." Good programming is an art, and requires talent on the part of the programmer. There's…

> "anyone can become a concert pianist"

There's a huge range of skill between "concert pianist" and "no good at piano." That's kind of the point of the speech, I think

There are hundreds of pianists with a very high degree of skill, but that are not concert pianists. Many are essentially freelancers and take gigs as they come-- choir accompanist, pit orchestra pianist, keyboardist in a band, resident organist in a church... etc.. Many of those pianists are quite skilled and talented, even if they are nowhere near skilled and talented enough to be a reknowned "concert pianist" like Murray Perahia, Emanuel Ax, Alicia de Larrocha, Mituko Uchida, etc..

The excessive focus on the idea of a "concert pianist" talent leads to this situation where the day to day programmers aren't getting the credit they deserve. For more on the under-appreciated musician analogy: watch the movie Waiting for Guffman and pay attention to the musicians. The dialog in the movie basically never acknowledges them. They're completely taken for granted by the other characters, but they are impeccable-- easily the most professional performers in the production. There's one point where one is playing the trumpet and timpani at the same time. I think that's the idea-- solid, productive programmers not being recognized for their talent, because they're compared to some incredibly high ideal.

Though there's also this dunning-kruger thing where lots of mediocre programmers think they are way more skilled than they actually are either because they're the best programmer in their little bubble, because they're a devout adherent to some specific coding religion, but haven't ever really been measured against an objective standard. Specifically because there are so many words wasted on "rock stars" and "ninjas" as well as blubbers and someone's personal experience with some horrible developer whose incompetence caused so many problems, etc...

Re: The programming talent myth

#256

Post by cdelsolar » Mon, May 04, 2015, 7:46 PM UTC

dusklight wrote: post #191

If you started programming when you were 12 and you've been programming for fun more than 4 hours a day every day since then, you are going to be drastically better than someone who starts programming in their first year of college and only does it to graduate. It feels like a bimodal distribution because you then get both kinds of programmers interviewing for jobs at the same age when they graduate from college and…

I don't know, I've been programming since I was 8 (on my brother's calculator) and I still write horrendous code pretty frequently.

Re: The programming talent myth

#257

Post by BurningFrog » Mon, May 04, 2015, 7:50 PM UTC

After a few decades programming professionally I have yet to encounter the idea of a U shaped talent curve where most people are either geniuses or useless. Does anyone actually think that?

Nor have I been on any team since arriving to California that had a majority of young white men. That actors portraying Mark Zuckerberg look like him is hardly surprising or a good scientific sample. I didn't read past that section.

Re: The programming talent myth

#258

Post by halflings » Mon, May 04, 2015, 7:50 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #250

SNvD7vEJ wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"He wrote them like math formulas, and didn't understand that they got executed in order." So he had a talent for functional programming, then?

Cute, but not quite. Those are still executed in some order. Not like algebra which is a set of expressions that are all true over all time.

Then declarative programming, maybe? You don't care as much about execution order when doing declarative programming like Prolog. (unless you're writing code "procedural-style")

Re: The programming talent myth

#259

Post by [deleted] » Mon, May 04, 2015, 7:50 PM UTC

SNvD7vEJ wrote: post #248

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then, there are those profoundly incapable of programming. My high school classmate who seemed to be getting it, but on the 1st assignment came to me and asked for help. It became clear he had no concept of the ordering of statement. He wrote them like math formulas, and didn't understand that they got executed in order. Fast-forward 3 years; both of us in college. He had to take a programming class again. I met him…

"He wrote them like math formulas, and didn't understand that they got executed in order." So he had a talent for functional programming, then?

[deleted]

Re: The programming talent myth

#260

Post by JoeAltmaier » Mon, May 04, 2015, 7:54 PM UTC

halflings wrote: post #258

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cute, but not quite. Those are still executed in some order. Not like algebra which is a set of expressions that are all true over all time.

Then declarative programming, maybe? You don't care as much about execution order when doing declarative programming like Prolog. (unless you're writing code "procedural-style")

That's it! He could have found a niche there.