IDK I've made PRs with multiple trivial commits within an hour. I've also spent over 30 hours on PRs with only 3 commits. It's a useful heuristic but doesn't map very well to work invested.
Why do most top performers have the highest count of commits and pull requests?
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Re: Why do most top performers have the highest count of commits and pull requests?
#12In the olden days they used to measure performance by SLOC, Source Lines of Code. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_lines_of_code
Which reminds me of this story: https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Negative_2000_Li...
Which reminds me of this (attributed to Bill Gates):
Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight.
Re: Why do most top performers have the highest count of commits and pull requests?
#13Maybe, just maybe... the person you think is a Top Performer is not actually the Top Performer and you are creating a fake correlation to their high number of commits and pull request. Maybe we need to define who is the Top Performer in the first place.
Re: Why do most top performers have the highest count of commits and pull requests?
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which reminds me of this story: https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Negative_2000_Li...
Which reminds me of this (attributed to Bill Gates): Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight.
Yet, if you had to build the aircraft out of metal shavings one sliver at a time in a laborious, error prone process, you might not know how far along you are but “well, we’re halfway there by mass” at least gives some measure for the project as a whole. If you game any metric it becomes trash
Re: Why do most top performers have the highest count of commits and pull requests?
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which reminds me of this story: https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Negative_2000_Li...
Which reminds me of this (attributed to Bill Gates): Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight.
> Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight.
Actually, aircraft are evaluated on weight, the less the better.
The A380 was initially 5.5 tons overweight, and that is one of the reasons it was a doomed product. That's equivalent to 55 passengers plus luggage (per trip), so Airbus would have to compensate on pricing, or provide fuel subsidies.
https://www.aviationpros.com/home/news/10395627/airbus-a380-...
Several other airplanes were also doomed for being overweight.
Boeing spent hundreds of millions of dollars to reduce weight on the 787 (I believe they saved 600 pounds):
https://www.flightglobal.com/787-weight-saving-is-costly/710...
(The 787 was heavily (and famously) outsourced, so Boeing had little control of what went into it. Using more composites often increases weight initially.)
OTOH, the Lancaster bomber was considered to be a great airplane because it could carry its own weight in payload (fuel and bombs.) In fact, one of the greatest bombers of all time.
Re: Why do most top performers have the highest count of commits and pull requests?
#16“Top performer” here means “top performer in a team, relatively to teammates”, which narrows the definition substantially. There are mysterious geniuses who can deliver a great piece of software just as an experiment/PoC out of the blue, but they don’t tend to shine in such environments—they could be founders or indie consultants, or it could be their side-project persona.
(I.e., stating the obvious, if you are intensely working on something on your own, magically starting to atomically commit each change with a thoughtful message will not make you better but can easily eat 1/3 of your time. It’s OK for your commits to be “fat” as long as you yourself manage to keep track of your work in meantime.)
Re: Why do most top performers have the highest count of commits and pull requests?
#17Maybe, just maybe... the person you think is a Top Performer is not actually the Top Performer and you are creating a fake correlation to their high number of commits and pull request. Maybe we need to define who is the Top Performer in the first place.
I mean I won't disagree with your first point but if you read the article you would know that the author very explicitly defines 'Top Performer.'
Re: Why do most top performers have the highest count of commits and pull requests?
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which reminds me of this (attributed to Bill Gates): Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight.
Yet, if you had to build the aircraft out of metal shavings one sliver at a time in a laborious, error prone process, you might not know how far along you are but “well, we’re halfway there by mass” at least gives some measure for the project as a whole. If you game any metric it becomes trash
That assumes you have a finished plane design and know the target weight, which I don't think is what the analogy is after.
Re: Why do most top performers have the highest count of commits and pull requests?
#19“top performer” is meaningless unless you’re looking back with enough distance to quantify all manner of contributions.. the people who generated the most complexity the fastest are just as likely to be dangerous forces of chaos.
Re: Why do most top performers have the highest count of commits and pull requests?
#20“Top performer” here means “top performer in a team, relatively to teammates”, which narrows the definition substantially. There are mysterious geniuses who can deliver a great piece of software just as an experiment/PoC out of the blue, but they don’t tend to shine in such environments—they could be founders or indie consultants, or it could be their side-project persona. (I.e., stating the obvious, if you are inten…
I batch it based on what could possibly make sense to revert.