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Programming is terrible – Lessons learned from a life wasted (2013) [video]

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Re: Programming is terrible – Lessons learned from a life wasted (2013) [video]

#61

Post by sien »

tormeh wrote: post #25
encoderer wrote: post #7

He bashes the "myth of the 10x" engineer. Clearly the idea of the 10xer has too big a place in the mythology of our industry. It's oddly masochistic and as far as I know it's unique to us. There are no doctors blogging about "10x doctors" for example. Anybody who has watched N0tch code on Twitch knows that there are certainly people who are far more productive coders than the average engineer. I have no idea if he's…

>There are no [profession] blogging about "10x [profession]" for example. ... He said and about the profession with surely the highest concentration of arrogant and self-satisfied know-it-alls.

Doctors, lawyers, academics are just as bad.

"Illusory superiority" applies to a lot of things. Most people think they are 'good drivers' and that is where it starts.

For most cognitive tasks the people who do them probably did fairly well at school, possibly the top 5 or 10 percent and so assume they are smarter than 19/20 or 9/10 people...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_superiority

Re: Programming is terrible – Lessons learned from a life wasted (2013) [video]

#62

Post by tcoff91 »

hueving wrote: post #40
Fiahil wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you 22 years old, fresh out of school, you are going to be writing code all day. And that's how it should be, You need to cut-your-teeth. I'm 22 years old, fresh out of school and I'm as involved in design, recruiting and peer reviews as my older peers. And that's how it should be. Why? Because age has nothing to do with productivity, understanding or ability to come up with simple, elegant and maintainable desi…

So you have no experience and you are just as involved in design? I could see that maybe for UX, but not for engineering. Either your entire team is inexperienced or they are just patronizing you.

Fresh out of school does not necessarily mean "no experience." Many students have written a lot of software before even entering college, and then work as developers during school, leaving with 2-3 years of development experience.

Re: Programming is terrible – Lessons learned from a life wasted (2013) [video]

#63

Post by seanmcdirmid »

Fiahil wrote: post #27
crag wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love to write code. And it's about 20% of my job. As an engineer, I spend most of my time in design (and meetings). The code is the fun, relaxing part. Many times, I don't even write code; I "review" code. We have "grunts" (younger programmers, usually) who pump out code all day. They're are involved in design too, of course. But in a very limited way. But you know, I think all of this comes with age. If you 22 yea…

> If you 22 years old, fresh out of school, you are going to be writing code all day. And that's how it should be, You need to cut-your-teeth. I'm 22 years old, fresh out of school and I'm as involved in design, recruiting and peer reviews as my older peers. And that's how it should be. Why? Because age has nothing to do with productivity, understanding or ability to come up with simple, elegant and maintainable desi…

Think of it as an apprenticeship: university doesn't give you the experience to jump in as a senior dev, but you'll eventually get there with practice and mentorship from an experienced dev.

Every 22 year old thinks they can do everything just as well coming out of school...very rarely are they right, and looking back just 5 years later provides a lot of different perspective.

Re: Programming is terrible – Lessons learned from a life wasted (2013) [video]

#64

Post by pjc50 »

encoderer wrote: post #7

He bashes the "myth of the 10x" engineer. Clearly the idea of the 10xer has too big a place in the mythology of our industry. It's oddly masochistic and as far as I know it's unique to us. There are no doctors blogging about "10x doctors" for example. Anybody who has watched N0tch code on Twitch knows that there are certainly people who are far more productive coders than the average engineer. I have no idea if he's…

"10x" is not without parallel. Most of the creative and sporting fields accept logarithmic pay scales - a few multimillionaires, a tier of people making a living, and a vast number of amateurs. It's just that in sports being 0.1% better can mean winning 10x the salary.

Re: Programming is terrible – Lessons learned from a life wasted (2013) [video]

#65

Post by lotophage »

wlesieutre wrote: post #51
steven2012 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been in the industry for >20 years. I've met 2 engineers/programmers that some would call the mythical 10x engineer. These are engineers that you can literally build your entire company on their shoulders because they do everything and they do everything with very few mistakes. The problem with the term is that everyone thinks they are 10x engineers, when they aren't. As I've mentioned, there were only 2 people…

> when he left, it literally took 5 engineers to replace the work that he did I dunno, he sounds more like a 5x engineer to me!

but they were all 2x engineers!

Re: Programming is terrible – Lessons learned from a life wasted (2013) [video]

#66

Post by throwawaymaroon »

GFK_of_xmaspast wrote: post #28
bcook wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coming from a link titled "Programming is terrible – Lessons learned from a life wasted" I expected some humor that may not be Politically Correct. Strangely, your response bothers me more than the quote. Could you not find anything positive to say?

Couldn't you?

...you've really escaped the cycle of negative feedback, haven't you? ;)

Re: Programming is terrible – Lessons learned from a life wasted (2013) [video]

#67

Post by throwawaymaroon »

sp332 wrote: post #31
bcook wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coming from a link titled "Programming is terrible – Lessons learned from a life wasted" I expected some humor that may not be Politically Correct. Strangely, your response bothers me more than the quote. Could you not find anything positive to say?

For an industry with a very high rate of depression, and disproportionately populated by demographics where suicide is the #2 leading cause of death, it's a very inappropriate joke. Source: Men http://www.cdc.gov/men/lcod/2011/LCOD_menallages2011.pdf and women http://www.cdc.gov/women/lcod/2011/WomenAll_2011.pdf

This is just a subjective feeling blending personal and second-hand experience, but it seems extremely unlikely to me that a joke in presentation context would drive someone over the edge.

Being unable to joke about it, however, is stifling. The reaction to clamp down on the joke suggests that suicide is something normal people don't do.

Re: Programming is terrible – Lessons learned from a life wasted (2013) [video]

#68

Post by etherael »

trhway wrote: post #23
encoderer wrote: post #7

He bashes the "myth of the 10x" engineer. Clearly the idea of the 10xer has too big a place in the mythology of our industry. It's oddly masochistic and as far as I know it's unique to us. There are no doctors blogging about "10x doctors" for example. Anybody who has watched N0tch code on Twitch knows that there are certainly people who are far more productive coders than the average engineer. I have no idea if he's…

> It's oddly masochistic and as far as I know it's unique to us. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stakhanovite_movement#History "The Stakhanovite movement was named after Aleksei Stakhanov, who had mined 102 tons of coal in less than 6 hours (14 times his quota).[1] However, his record would soon be "broken" by his followers.[1] On February 1, 1936, it was reported that Nikita Izotov had mined 607 tons of coal in a singl…

> Programmers as a blue colar job

?

Re: Programming is terrible – Lessons learned from a life wasted (2013) [video]

#69

Post by ellisike »

smegel wrote: post #59
encoderer wrote: post #7

He bashes the "myth of the 10x" engineer. Clearly the idea of the 10xer has too big a place in the mythology of our industry. It's oddly masochistic and as far as I know it's unique to us. There are no doctors blogging about "10x doctors" for example. Anybody who has watched N0tch code on Twitch knows that there are certainly people who are far more productive coders than the average engineer. I have no idea if he's…

> I have no idea if he's coding 10x faster It's a bad myth that "speed" has anything to do with the 10x or 100x programmer. The thing that sets great programmers apart is their ability to instinctively and intuitively design elegant and correct solutions to a given problem while introducing minimal bugs. A great programmer whose code will stand the test of time without needing a total rewrite 6 months later and witho…

Great programmers use source control, integrate often, and communicate with their team. They basically do all the the things we know we're supposed to do, but most only give lip service to it.

Re: Programming is terrible – Lessons learned from a life wasted (2013) [video]

#70

Post by smoyer »

encoderer wrote: post #7

He bashes the "myth of the 10x" engineer. Clearly the idea of the 10xer has too big a place in the mythology of our industry. It's oddly masochistic and as far as I know it's unique to us. There are no doctors blogging about "10x doctors" for example. Anybody who has watched N0tch code on Twitch knows that there are certainly people who are far more productive coders than the average engineer. I have no idea if he's…

I AM a 10x programmer! [1][2]

[1] When writing code to solve problems I've encountered frequently in one of the languages I've used long enough to thoroughly memorize all facets of the syntax and most of the available libraries.

[2] Consistently using those 10x powers would quite possibly be the most boring life I could imagine as a software engineer ... give me a hard problem to solve once, then never ask me about that problem again!

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