The Parable of the Two Programmers (1985) • Hacker News Board

Re: The Parable of the Two Programmers (1985)

#161

Post by vkjv » Mon, Jan 26, 2015, 2:46 PM UTC

jakobegger wrote: post #80

anaolykarpov wrote: post #35

There 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 a different experience. Our heating broke on two (unrelated) occasions. In the first case, the repairman came, fixed the thing in 20 minutes, seemed competent, and I gladly payed him. In the second case, the company sent an inexperienced employee, who couldn't figure out the problem, and spent 2 hours trying everything before finally deciding the most expensive component needed to be replaced. I was very unsat…

I had a similar experience with a plumber. Normally, I would have no clue how experienced the person was, but this particular person kept "missing" certain parts and had to make 3 trips to the hardware store! He only charged me for the first, but, clearly he didn't know what he was doing.

Re: The Parable of the Two Programmers (1985)

#162

Post by vkjv » Mon, Jan 26, 2015, 2:50 PM UTC

derekp7 wrote: post #147

greenyoda wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This. While common in many fields, I feel that this is most obvious with musicians. "What? I'm not paying this band $1000 for a 2 hour performance!" When, in reality, you are paying them for many hours of practice in order to prepare for that 2 hour performance as well.

Re: The Parable of the Two Programmers (1985)

#163

Post by jvanloov » Mon, Jan 26, 2015, 2:59 PM UTC

BuildTheRobots wrote: post #160

NeverEnough wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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]"

Well, that's absolutely blown my mind -thank you. Now I just want to know how they were dealing with power storage...

Also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Jamais_Contente

Re: The Parable of the Two Programmers (1985)

#164

Post by vkjv » Mon, Jan 26, 2015, 3:03 PM UTC

Hermel wrote: post #26

thaumaturgy wrote: post #23

Oh god, this thing's actually getting traction here. Look, there's no moral to this story and very little to glean from it because it's about a situation that's ridiculous on its face. It's written to appeal to cowboy programmers to make them feel better about their prejudices in software development. Can any of you actually relate a real-world case where a 4-month-long team-driven effort produced some code to solve…

Yes, I've seen situations like this. As a rule of thumb, problems that fit into the head of one person are more efficiently solved by one person on its own than by a team.

This, 1000 times, this. If you ever find yourself having difficulty cleanly separating a task, than you are going to spend more time defining the separation and integrating the parts than have having a single person do the task.

Re: The Parable of the Two Programmers (1985)

#165

Post by speby » Mon, Jan 26, 2015, 3:45 PM UTC

How neat to see this little article pop up from 1985. Professor Neil Rickert was one of my computer science profs while I was at Northern Illinois University. He was a pretty solid teacher and beyond a doubt, knows his shit in and out. Definitely a highly respected professor within the computer science ranks. He's now retired or Professor Emeritus now, I believe.

Re: The Parable of the Two Programmers (1985)

#166

Post by rumcajz » Mon, Jan 26, 2015, 5:08 PM UTC

Rarely (unless you are working on your hobby project) you get a chance to make program simple. There are inherently complex requirements that can't be changed for political reasons, complex legacy interfaces to conform to et c.

Interestingly, most programmers seem to think that inherent complexity doesn't exist, i.e. that any requirements can be translated into a simple program. The result of this approach are leaky abstractions that later on cause much pain to the developer and anyone maintaining the codebase.

Re: The Parable of the Two Programmers (1985)

#167

Post by tripzilch » Mon, Jan 26, 2015, 7:04 PM UTC

PhoenixWright wrote: post #151

I can't wait to get out of software development. I'm just a couple of years removed from uni and I'm already planning my exit. My first corporate job was a huge eye-opener. This type of stuff left and right with zero career advancement and complete disdain from corporate. I'm not even thirty and I plan on retiring and starting my own business (tech or other) by the time I'm 40. The only good thing about tech is that…

> It's a complete shame too because I enjoy solving problems through code.

Who/what's there to stop you doing just that, once you have taken "the opportunity to take the money and run"?

Re: The Parable of the Two Programmers (1985)

#168

Post by V-2 » Mon, Jan 26, 2015, 10:10 PM UTC

collyw wrote: post #158

V-2 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I can confirm this happens in high end hairdressers. I have never spent a lot on haircuts, and a few years ago when I was going from long to short hair (for a job interview), my mum offered to pay for an expensive haircut for me. The haircut was not really any "better" than many of the cheap ones I had paid for myself, but the hairdresser spent a lot more time, and there seemed to be a lot more faffing about, with no…

As a friend of mine told me, "I don't get it how my haircut can take 5 minutes and cost 25 [nevermind the currency here], while my wife sits there for 1.5h paying 150" - so I pointed out that HER haircut is actually cheaper :) Profound? Perhaps... On the subject? Quite so! ;)

Re: The Parable of the Two Programmers (1985)

#169

Post by dredmorbius » Fri, Jan 30, 2015, 2:24 PM UTC

patrickmay wrote: post #91

jebediah wrote: post #4

Wow, as someone who is going to start doing Computer Science next year, I had already heard that most of programming is about thinking, but had no idea that is was to the point of 5 lines of code per day being exceptional.

When working on an existing system, I find it's a good sign if your SLOC/day count goes negative for a while.

One contract I had, I dropped the line count of an inherited codebase by 50%. Much of which was necessary to simply be able to run (and debug) it interactively.

It still ran. It ran correctly. It ran faster than previously.

I never quite grasped what it was doing.

The company folded some time after I left it.