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The 10x developer is not a myth (2013)

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Re: The 10x developer is not a myth (2013)

#51
Arguing that 10x developers don't exist strikes me as the extraordinary position requiring extraordinary evidence, rather than the inverse. People vary; why wouldn't they here?

Some people argue, essentially, "programming is complicated," but even if you want to claim that programming consists of multiple dimensions along which programmers can be measured, how about when one person outperforms another on every dimension by a factor of ten? What should we call that other than one person being ten times better than another?

Other people argue that while 10x developers may exist, teamwork matters far more. Well, what do you suppose would happen then if you managed to assemble a team of only 10x developers?

Re: The 10x developer is not a myth (2013)

#52

There are two kinds of developers: 1. Those who are good developers 2. Those who can't write any real code (cargo cult or cut&paste developers, e.g. the 25% who I didn't hire over the years because they were not able to FizzBuzz)(25%-50% of the market) The 10x comes from comparing (1) and (2) - although dividing anything by 0 is larger than 10x.

[deleted]

Re: The 10x developer is not a myth (2013)

#53
post #15

Here's a question: Is Picasso a 10x artist? The thing about the 10x claim is that it takes something complex and creative and applies a scalar multiplier to it. Talking about 10x programmers is _semantically_ problematic.

Programming is a craft, not an art. If programmer a satisfies the requirements 10 times faster than programmer b, and does so repeatedly, then programmer a is a 10x compared to b

Re: The 10x developer is not a myth (2013)

#54

I have no doubt that there are programmers who are 10x as productive as other programmers. I witnessed it over and over. But as I understand it, the "10x" means 10 times the productivity of an average programmer. I wonder how productive the average programmer is. I find this question super interesting. For example, I see more and more programmers who use "Query Builders" and "ORM layers" without understanding the und…

This is not only about frameworks and ORMs, it's about refusing to comprehensively understand stuff before you use it or change it. It can be any abstractions, even (usually) the ones you created by yourself.

It's easier to add a special case check, than to read through the codebase to see if it's even needed, or, God forbid, to refactor in 5 places so it's not needed (it might break sth else!!! I would have to read and keep in memory the whole control flow of the program!!).

Programmers have to do dozens such decisions every day, so after a few months if they go the easy way too often it adds up and creates chaos.

I've done this myself, and seen this done by younger programmers. It's that crucial skill of stepping a few steps back and looking at the code as a whole.

I've seen a great compact example recently, one of the students I supervised wrote sth like this:

    List findBySurname(String surname) {
        List persons = session.find(surname);
        if (persons.size() == 0)
            return null;
        return persons;
    }

    ...

    List persons = findBySurname(surname);
    for (p : persons) {
        p.doSth();
    }
The student wrote both methods, and got rejection from tests because of NPE. He wanted to fix it by adding if (persons != null) { ... }

:) this example is easy, but in more complex situations it's easy to do the same, and it adds up. This is one of the reasons I dislike OO programming (especially the kind where you hide everything behind a few layers of interconnected objects). Because it makes it harder to understand what REALLY happens on the data level.

Re: The 10x developer is not a myth (2013)

#55
Those who complain most loudly about the 10x being a myth are those whose self opinion of their skill (placing themselves as a 10x), and their actual level of skill (placing them a 1x) are too far apart. Often they don't realise what their actual skill level is until then meet and work with a real 10x in the flesh. This makes sense because why would you care if people believe there are 10x programmers or not? Why would you be upset if people are going around tweeting that unicorns are real? It makes no difference to anyone. It's only a problem if it rubs up badly against your self-esteem.

Re: The 10x developer is not a myth (2013)

#57
post #48
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yosefk.com has a great article about being 10x more effective by being 10x more selective.

That article is a post-mortem with an awful lot of hindsight. Not everybody would able to ask the questions Yossi identifies in the post-mortem while the requirements are presented. Would somebody then, instead, be able to become 10x more effective by thinking 10x more about their work, before they do it?

Personally, I believe there's some level of "intuition" involved, that perhaps some people are just gifted with naturally. I think these people still have to practice though, to build upon that natural ability.

Note that I'm certainly not referring to myself here -- I consider myself Just Average. I'm thinking of friends and colleages I've known over the years who have this seemingly natural gift.

That being said, I also think everyone can benefit by finding some sweet spot between 'thinking hard up front' and 'analysis paralysis'. For me personally that means start by doing something, then revise and iterate. That's just my cognitive style I suppose.

Re: The 10x developer is not a myth (2013)

#58
post #31

I have no doubt that there are programmers who are 10x as productive as other programmers. I witnessed it over and over. But as I understand it, the "10x" means 10 times the productivity of an average programmer. I wonder how productive the average programmer is. I find this question super interesting. For example, I see more and more programmers who use "Query Builders" and "ORM layers" without understanding the und…

There is a huge cost to handwriting SQL too that one mist be careful of - it is very easy to result in poor abstractions as a result of inconsistent apis from lack of abstraction over SQL. My company is currently in the process of moving back to an ORM after 5 years or so abandoning ORM usage due to nightmarish performance using NHibernate in .Net (maybe more of an indictment on the code than anything else, but I don…

> inconsistent data fields being returned by various queries, resulting in inconsistent api endpoint data returned to the client and thus inability to safely abstract without significant hacks/nebulous data model state.

You are coding against actual queries? Why not functions to hide the table abstractions:

https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/sql-createfun...

https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/create-procedure.htm...

>We had no ability to gate content by various values from other tables without modifying the handrolled SQL in every single location

Again, don't sql functions solve this?

Re: The 10x developer is not a myth (2013)

#59
If the problems we solve are NP hard problems, it stands to reason that 10x quicker solutions are actually not that impressive and certainly would be very likely to exist. Suggesting that certain people aren't able to arrive at solutions that are an order of magnitude better or develop workable solutions an order of magnitude more quickly is clearly ignoring reality.

Re: The 10x developer is not a myth (2013)

#60
post #51

Arguing that 10x developers don't exist strikes me as the extraordinary position requiring extraordinary evidence, rather than the inverse. People vary; why wouldn't they here? Some people argue, essentially, "programming is complicated," but even if you want to claim that programming consists of multiple dimensions along which programmers can be measured, how about when one person outperforms another on every dimens…

People vary yes, but do we have 10x variation in performance? Actually for 10x to be a meaningful size, would need significantly more variation. Can one find support for such level of variation in other, more well studied fields? Say students, managers, factory workers?
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