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The Myth of the Myth of the 10x Programmer

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Re: The Myth of the Myth of the 10x Programmer

#111

Post by ivalm »

JackFr wrote: post #66
logicallee wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty obvious that there are coders who can do the work of - all of the work of, and better than - a team of 50 talented programmers. For example when Linus wrote git he singlehandedly outprogrammed every team of version control vendors. He was a 50x programmer. (If not more.) This is a real literal example without exaggeration.

I think a good portion of the story there was thorough knowledge of prior art, the ability to identify what was essential and what was incidental and the fact that he built on a singular vision.

Sure, but none of those things were monopolized by Linus. Other teams/engineers could have done the same, tried to do the same.

Re: The Myth of the Myth of the 10x Programmer

#112

Post by sunstone »

To make an analogy with the ancient Roman trieme ships with three tiers of rowers. A 10x rower in that context is not the guy who can pull the oar 10 times harder, it's the guy who, while he can pull the oar, can also tell you when the ship is on course because he knows how to navigate and thereby makes everyone's effort more efficient.

Re: The Myth of the Myth of the 10x Programmer

#113

Post by rat9988 »

Aeolun wrote: post #98
dangus wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other factor is a lack of personal life boundaries. The 10x engineers that I’ve interacted with can be found working on nights and weekends because they enjoy it and have nothing better to do. Working those nights and weekends without coworker interruption also means that they get to learn more things freely rather than being interrupted. As a result they tend to be highly productive, but I’d argue that it could…

I don't think that is unfair. It’s perfectly acceptable to be a 3x developer. What bothers me is the people that are happy to be a <1 developer. Or even a <0 developer, whose benefit to the team is net negative.

>What bothers me is the people that are happy to be a We can't all be above average. So we are either all 1 developper, or some of us are bound to be less.

Re: The Myth of the Myth of the 10x Programmer

#114

Post by charleslmunger »

jimbokun wrote: post #42

Here is your 10x programmer: https://norvig.com/sudoku.html "In this essay I tackle the problem of solving every Sudoku puzzle. It turns out to be quite easy (about one page of code for the main idea and two pages for embellishments) using two ideas: constraint propagation and search." If you gave this task to an "average" developer, how long would it take for them to implement? How many lines of code would it be? Wo…

If you want an answer to that question: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3033446

Re: The Myth of the Myth of the 10x Programmer

#115

Post by afarrell »

learnstats2 wrote: post #102
afarrell wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a sure sign that someone is trying to Nope. Explaining things well is a skill. One can be non-excellent at it. Its possible to have a moderately-good grasp of something that you can use while working with it, but not yet have come up with good ways to make your knowledge explicit in a well-organized fashion.

Moderately-good is not genius. Part of being great at something includes an ability to abstract out common difficulties, which helps other people to understand (even when you are not that great at explaining). I'm not aware that I've ever met a genius who was working on completely different principles to other people - everyone reaches the same difficulties and has to find a way to resolve those.

> Moderately-good is not genius.

Agreed.

But moderately-good is also not "a sure sign that someone is trying to appear smarter than they are".

> everyone reaches the same difficulties

That is definitely false. I've had difficulties with social skills, the writing process, and knowing how to direct my attention. Some of these are so alien to other people that when I ask questions, it is not uncommon to get responses like:

* Just do the obvious thing.

* This isn't hard.

* What do you think {repetition of my question}?

* You're overthinking things.

* What the fuck is wrong with you?

The folks I've heard get discouraged from maths or science tell similar stories. Part of being good at the skill of explanation is asking questions which help you understand the other person's perspective and what their difficulties are.

Re: The Myth of the Myth of the 10x Programmer

#116

Post by cmhnn »

How does an industry so full of brilliant people who consider themselves much smarter than their users keep arguing in these absolutes about programmers like their skills are easily classified.

Many things have become popular that were originally written like ass by someone who was better at making something people found useful than they were at data structures or thinking in big O.

A lot of genius language design people are nearly useless when the whole messy world of shit like network, filesystems and interacting with things not their language is involved.

Programmers being human also are not some consistent machines that constantly maintain some level of productivity regardless of what is going on in their personal life or their interests waxing or waning in a given problem space.

The people whose code has changed the world are maybe a handful or two. So, astounding developers much better than most do exist. But even they are not some multiple of every coder for every problem.

Nevermind, it's time to stop even thinking about programmers alleging truisms about programming and go get my MSNBC|FOX fix so I can get the necessary stimulus to knee jerk.

Re: The Myth of the Myth of the 10x Programmer

#118

Post by afarrell »

1337shadow wrote: post #91
prostheticvamp wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As Feynman said: you don’t really understand a subject until you can explain it to your grandfather.

And that's how I explained the cloud to my grandma: the company buys big daddy servers which make baby computers that the company sells for profit. She was so happy she finally understood what my job was at the time.

When I read this gestation/birth analogy, it makes it seem to me like a large piece of hardware assembles and ejects a small piece of hardware. I assume in-person there was more detail or different imagery?

Re: The Myth of the Myth of the 10x Programmer

#119

Post by xupybd »

dangus wrote: post #79
gilbetron wrote: post #10

The concept of the 10x programmer seems to have been drifted from its original meaning. It isn't that there's a coder that is 10x better than a good coder. It is that a lot of people are really bad at their jobs, and a coder that thinks and learns about problems can be far better than those people. It comes from terrible "corporate drone" software developers in the 80s and 90s - the ones that would takes weeks to dev…

The other factor is a lack of personal life boundaries. The 10x engineers that I’ve interacted with can be found working on nights and weekends because they enjoy it and have nothing better to do. Working those nights and weekends without coworker interruption also means that they get to learn more things freely rather than being interrupted. As a result they tend to be highly productive, but I’d argue that it could…

These engineers end up with much more experience in a shorter time span. The guy that worked 40 hours for the last 5 years is going to have far less experience than the guy who worked 60 hours for the last 5. More experience tends to lead to better decision making and better code.

That said I'm the 40 hour guy. I want to work to live not live to work. That will make me less of a developer than others but I think I still bring value to my work place. I don't want to look back on a life lived in a cubicle.

Re: The Myth of the Myth of the 10x Programmer

#120

Post by kvb »

rat9988 wrote: post #113
Aeolun wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that is unfair. It’s perfectly acceptable to be a 3x developer. What bothers me is the people that are happy to be a <1 developer. Or even a <0 developer, whose benefit to the team is net negative.

>What bothers me is the people that are happy to be a We can't all be above average. So we are either all 1 developper, or some of us are bound to be less.

But we can all aspire to be a >1 developer, even if we're not one currently. I don't necessarily think that contentment with being below average is universally bad (maybe it's perfectly rational given one's preferences for leisure vs. work, for example), but I'd hope that most <1 developers are juniors who hope to improve over time.
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