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Qualities that I believe make the most difference in programmers’ productivity

antirez.com

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Re: Qualities that I believe make the most difference in programmers’ productivity

#141

Post by endorphone »

simonw wrote: post #48

In this thread: mostly people responding to the headline, not the actual content of the article. There's some fantastic stuff in here about how great design is the key to increased productivity. For example: "It is very important for a designer to recognize all the parts of a design that are not easy wins, that is, there is no proportionality between the effort and the advantages. A project that is executed in order…

In this thread: mostly people responding to the headline, not the actual content of the article.

And the headline was purposefully chosen to elicit that effect -- nothing engenders a massing crowd response quite like summoning the boogeyman of the 10x programmer, allowing everyone to flow forward with their anecdotes and personal grievances.

Re: Qualities that I believe make the most difference in programmers’ productivity

#142

Post by Chris2048 »

sametmax wrote: post #111

Lol, HN, the place where people try to answer to an expression, a saying or an image by being technically correct. Your comment could be a line from Sheldon in the Big Bang Theory :)

> the place where people try to answer to an expression

burden is on the you to show that "10x programmer" is "an expression, a saying or an image". Plenty people consider the term to be literal, and argue as such all over HN.

Re: Qualities that I believe make the most difference in programmers’ productivity

#143

Post by fnord123 »

sametmax wrote: post #67
struppi wrote: post #13

Everything from the original post sounds reasonable, you should absolutely read it. Just some random thoughts to add to it: * For most of my past clients, the skill / output of their programmers was not the bottleneck, even though they thought so. As long as something is not a bottleneck, there's not point in trying too hard to optimize it (since you can get better ROI somewhere else). * Software is a team effort. Im…

Come on, Antirez is a x10 programmer, he coded one of the most brillant software of the last decade. It's so well done I use it as an example in my trainings, making people compile it to stop being afraid of building from source because I know it never fails and it's so damn simple. And programmer reading anything on his blog, or anything on HN for that matter, is not an average programmer anyway. The simple fact you…

So you're saying that 10x developers definitely exist, it's just a disappointing state of affairs.

Like how the Turing Test was rendered obsolete because online comments (e.g. Youtube) became so bad, the bar to writing a bot that passed as one of them was lowered dramatically.

Re: Qualities that I believe make the most difference in programmers’ productivity

#144

Post by didymospl »

Even though I agree with all the points made by the author, the notion of 10x programmer reminds me of one-man army movies like Rambo and it's equally ridiculous. Software development is a collaborative effort, not a contest where whoever commits more LOC or finishes more tasks wins. It's not that hard to be 10 times more productive than anyone else if you built something from the scratch, possibly reinventing the wheel instead of using common libraries/frameworks, wrote no documentation and you're not really willing to share your knowledge with other developers. Sadly, this happens - see e.g. http://thedailywtf.com/articles/the-inner-json-effect [edit: added link]

Re: Qualities that I believe make the most difference in programmers’ productivity

#145

Post by crazypyro »

sametmax wrote: post #111

Lol, HN, the place where people try to answer to an expression, a saying or an image by being technically correct. Your comment could be a line from Sheldon in the Big Bang Theory :)

Responding with civility to the pedantry is just a part of HN. I've found that being humble to comments like these, even if you disagree, is the simplest way to defuse the situation.

Re: Qualities that I believe make the most difference in programmers’ productivity

#146

Post by cabalamat »

LoSboccacc wrote: post #136
simonw wrote: post #48

In this thread: mostly people responding to the headline, not the actual content of the article. There's some fantastic stuff in here about how great design is the key to increased productivity. For example: "It is very important for a designer to recognize all the parts of a design that are not easy wins, that is, there is no proportionality between the effort and the advantages. A project that is executed in order…

one million time this. as the resident tech lead I spend more time trying to get people focus on things that matters than actually designing and documenting can provide daily anectodes but here's the last one: we use a javascript scrolling library, for reasons etc, long story short a programmer spent a couple day trying to figure out why the horizontal bar wronly showed on edge, until I went in and dropped a display…

> we use a javascript scrolling library, for reasons etc, long story short a programmer spent a couple day trying to figure out why the horizontal bar wronly showed on edge, until I went in and dropped a display none on the bar itself.

Wouldn't an even simpler solution be to just use the scrolling built into browsers?

Re: Qualities that I believe make the most difference in programmers’ productivity

#147

Post by watwut »

mikulas_florek wrote: post #107
latch wrote: post #63

I don't understand how anyone can say 10x programmers don't exist. There are programmers who DRAIN value from projects and companies. The most insidious I've dealt with are people who assure everyone their part is going to be done on time, but come the deadline, they have nothing. I am today, a 10x better programmer than I was where I started. In terms of quality, complexity, efficiency, readability, maintainability,…

Notch is known to be quite a bad programmer. Or do you consider him to be 1000x better programmer just because he wrote something which earned billions? In that case he's probably 10x better programmer than Carmack

Minecraft was working and it was already quite big. Quite bad programmer would not achieve working Minecraft. Notch have his limits and made some decisions that did not scaled, but "quite bad programmer" is an overstatement.

Re: Qualities that I believe make the most difference in programmers’ productivity

#148

Post by Helmet »

jonpress wrote: post #137

The programmer is only as good as his manager. If a 10x programmer is working under the leadership of a 1x programmer, he will probaby turn into a 0.5x (due to lost motivation). A 10x programmer in a decision-making position will actually bring up the output of all other programmers. In reality, a 10x programmer doesn't have to be fast at programming themselves, they just have to be able to foster good habits which m…

I disagree - some of my best managers weren't exactly the best programmers. They did, however, have a mind for smart architectural decisions and knew when to "back off".

Re: Qualities that I believe make the most difference in programmers’ productivity

#149

Post by victormustar »

cabalamat wrote: post #146
LoSboccacc wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

one million time this. as the resident tech lead I spend more time trying to get people focus on things that matters than actually designing and documenting can provide daily anectodes but here's the last one: we use a javascript scrolling library, for reasons etc, long story short a programmer spent a couple day trying to figure out why the horizontal bar wronly showed on edge, until I went in and dropped a display…

> we use a javascript scrolling library, for reasons etc, long story short a programmer spent a couple day trying to figure out why the horizontal bar wronly showed on edge, until I went in and dropped a display none on the bar itself. Wouldn't an even simpler solution be to just use the scrolling built into browsers?

I'll do r&d for 1 or 2 days and give you the right answer :)

Re: Qualities that I believe make the most difference in programmers’ productivity

#150

Post by codr4life »

"When the task at hand is much more rigid, with specific guidelines about what tools to use and how to implement things, the ability of a 10x programmer to perform a lot of work in less time is weakened: it can still exploit “local” design possibilities to do a much better work, but cannot change in more profound ways the path used to reach the goal, that may include, possibly, even eliminating part of the specification completely from the project, so that the goal to be reached looks almost the same but the efforts to reach it are reduced by a big factor."

This is one of the reason working in software sucks so badly these days. You'll inevitably be forced to work with lesser tools in more ceremonial ways, which takes away most of the leverage from experience and skill; effectively dragging everyone down to the lowest common denominator where everything is done according to some stupid, over engineered specification.

And one of the beefs people seem to have when I share my code publicly. Cutting corners and side-stepping complexity is where coding turns to art for me, where the fun begins; which means that many of my programs look like toys in comparison to "serious" software. Yet they still manage to get the job done for less effort, and a closer look reveals that the simplicity is carefully engineered. I just don't have much time or patience for ceremonies these days.

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