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The Parable of the Two Programmers (1985)
141–150 of 169 posts
Re: The Parable of the Two Programmers (1985)
#142There 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...
Re: The Parable of the Two Programmers (1985)
#143There 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…
It isn't totally irrational, it's merely measuring the only metric we can measure objectively, in the usual way it's measured. The fact the measurement function is exactly backwards is not obvious; in fact, it's entirely reasonable to expect to pay more for taking up more of someone's time.
Locks are actually a very good (pathologically good?) example of this, because we usually have no idea how well and how often they succeeded and a single failure can be catastrophic. Therefore, it's very hard to tell how good of a job the locksmith who installed or fixed it did without being a locksmith yourself. Compare cars: With a car, you drive it around pretty often, and you get a feel for how it handles and smells and sounds relative to the baseline established when you first got it. There's a constant evaluation of factors relevant to how the car is actually doing. With a lock, if the lock is put in well and functioning properly, the successful evaluations are mostly unnoticed unless you have a camera watching the lock 24/7.
Re: The Parable of the Two Programmers (1985)
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the mechanic story all over: Guy takes his car to a garage because it keeps breaking down, and the mechanic leans in and listens to the engine for a minute. He goes and gets a hammer and listens to the engine again, and then raps sharply on the engine casing. The engine goes back into sync and stops breaking down. The mechanic says "that'll be £500, please." The guy's outraged: "But all you did was tap it!" M…
The origin of that story is Charles Steinmetz, and it involves Henry Ford, a $10,000 invoice and placing a X in chalk. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/charles-proteus-steinm...
> One Friday afternoon in 1921, Steinmetz hopped in his electric car and headed off for a weekend at...
Whu?
Re: The Parable of the Two Programmers (1985)
#145There 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 the lock tumbler, whacked it once on the head with the rubber mallet, and the door unlocked. From the time he produced the tools to the time I was inside the house was well under sixty seconds.
I thought, Why didn't he just do that in the first place? And concluded much the same as you've said -- $70 for thirty seconds of work might seem steep and some people need the song and dance. Personally, I was grateful to have on-demand service like that available so quickly :)
Re: The Parable of the Two Programmers (1985)
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's explicitly labeled a parable: "a simple story used to illustrate a lesson." It's not meant to be literally true. The second programmer's inexperience is just another reason why his boss judges his work to obviously have been easy.
Unrealistic parables teach unrealistic lessons That a thing is a parable does not render it immune to disagreement on realism grounds Indeed if the defense is to point out that it's not meant to be realistic then it's probably not just valueless, but of negative value Parables are not a good way to learn in my opinion
The point of this parable is that neither company has any clue what the actual value of the work done was. Alan looked like he was working hard and was rewarded for looking like he was working hard. Charles looked like he was goofing off and was rewarded for that.
Yet when you compare the results, Alan took 24 programmer-months to solve the problem, and Charles took 3 to do it better. If the companies had some way to objectively value the work done, Charles is clearly vastly better. But they don't.
It's got nothing to do with the specific techniques involved. It doesn't even weigh in on the reason for the difference -- is Charles brilliant compared to Alan's normal, or did Alan just stumble and turn a simple task hard? That's all irrelevant.
The point is just to illuminate how hard it is to know the value of a developer's work. I know I've run into that repeatedly in my career.
Re: The Parable of the Two Programmers (1985)
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Conclusion: we don't want to pay related to the value we receive for a certain service, but to the amount of effort involved in the delivery of that service. But is that irrational? This seems to be a personal preference. By refusing to pay the same price for 10 minutes of work or one hour of work, we assert that we do believe in a certain income equality. "Disturbing someone for one hour vs 10 minutes" is not a ne…
It's irrational because the 10 minutes of work that doesn't destroy the door is worth much more than the hour of work that does - replacing a door is expensive and costs the homeowner additional time and aggravation. Also, it's really more than 10 minutes of work, since the locksmith has to spend time driving to and from the customer. His fee needs to cover his travel time and expenses (gas, wear and tear on his truc…
Not only that, but you have to also account for the time that the locksmith spent learning the craft. And the opportunity cost of that learning/practicing time.
Re: The Parable of the Two Programmers (1985)
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Conclusion: we don't want to pay related to the value we receive for a certain service, but to the amount of effort involved in the delivery of that service. But is that irrational? This seems to be a personal preference. By refusing to pay the same price for 10 minutes of work or one hour of work, we assert that we do believe in a certain income equality. "Disturbing someone for one hour vs 10 minutes" is not a ne…
It seems more rational to look at things as having your doorlock fixed, because that is why you call for the locksmith. You don't call just to see someone doing his job for the sake of it.
You call the locksmith because you want to get inside your shelter, having the door fixed is just a utility to get there. Your home is where you feel secure, and it is only social to share some of that in return for the help retaining it, acknowledging that you couldn't acquire and maintain it all by yourself.
Re: The Parable of the Two Programmers (1985)
#149I can see exactly where Charles went wrong. Here is how the story should have gone:
Charles implements an entire interpreted language with garbage collection and an incomprehensibly coded virtual machine. Everything is documented and works flawlessly at that level, however. Nary a bug can be found by anyone experimenting with the language.
Charles writes the program in 30 lines of this language, which appear fairy simple on the surface, but rely on some deep semantics (that Alan's team doesn't even comprehend, for instance, let alone management, without studying).
In this case, nobody can dismiss the problem as being something easy that a junior programmer can solve, and Alan's team look like troglodytes from the Dark Ages. All the more so because their buggy, incomplete program is over 2500 lines, while Charles' language fits into 2300.
:)
Re: The Parable of the Two Programmers (1985)
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
The origin of that story is Charles Steinmetz, and it involves Henry Ford, a $10,000 invoice and placing a X in chalk. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/charles-proteus-steinm...
> 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]"