Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Myth of the Myth of the 10x Programmer

payne.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 227 posts

Re: The Myth of the Myth of the 10x Programmer

#81

Post by jbotz »

remmargorp64 wrote: post #3

10X programmers DO exist. They aren't just a myth, and they aren't just about knowing when to buy vs build, or when to use a particular framework or toolkit, or how to "mentor" other developers. Chris Sawyer wrote 99% of the code for RollerCoaster Tycoon in x86 assembly language, with the remaining one percent written in C. RollerCoaster Tycoon was a beautiful game which still stands the test of time to this day. The…

And it's about just loving the work so much more than anything else that when you're in the zone you think about it 16 hours a day and dream about it the other 8 hours! ;-)

Someone who's 2x smart and 2x experienced, only needs to spend 2.5x the amount of time to be a 10x programmer, and that's the realistic difference between someone who is just doing a job and someone who is following their passion.

Re: The Myth of the Myth of the 10x Programmer

#82

Post by afarrell »

m0zg wrote: post #68
saagarjha wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've never encountered someone that I think is genuinely a 10x programmer. I have. (Interestingly, some of these people knew this and had a surprising lack of modesty about it as well…) Usually I think it boils down to being able to have the experience to consistently guess right on things, come up with new ideas, and not get tangled in the weeds: most of them are smart, but not so smart that you’re just lost when…

>> not so smart that you’re just lost when talking to them That, BTW, is a sure sign that someone is trying to appear smarter than they really are. Having worked at 2 research labs over the course of my career I know more than my fair share of genius-level people. Without fail, they are humble about it, and can explain complex concepts in a way the rest of us can understand. This is something that just blows my mind…

> a sure sign that someone is trying to

Nope. Explaining things well is a skill. One can be non-excellent at it. Its possible to have a moderately-good grasp of something that you can use while working with it, but not yet have come up with good ways to make your knowledge explicit in a well-organized fashion.

Re: The Myth of the Myth of the 10x Programmer

#83

Post by prostheticvamp »

m0zg wrote: post #68
saagarjha wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've never encountered someone that I think is genuinely a 10x programmer. I have. (Interestingly, some of these people knew this and had a surprising lack of modesty about it as well…) Usually I think it boils down to being able to have the experience to consistently guess right on things, come up with new ideas, and not get tangled in the weeds: most of them are smart, but not so smart that you’re just lost when…

>> not so smart that you’re just lost when talking to them That, BTW, is a sure sign that someone is trying to appear smarter than they really are. Having worked at 2 research labs over the course of my career I know more than my fair share of genius-level people. Without fail, they are humble about it, and can explain complex concepts in a way the rest of us can understand. This is something that just blows my mind…

As Feynman said: you don’t really understand a subject until you can explain it to your grandfather.

Re: The Myth of the Myth of the 10x Programmer

#84

Post by saagarjha »

m0zg wrote: post #68
saagarjha wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've never encountered someone that I think is genuinely a 10x programmer. I have. (Interestingly, some of these people knew this and had a surprising lack of modesty about it as well…) Usually I think it boils down to being able to have the experience to consistently guess right on things, come up with new ideas, and not get tangled in the weeds: most of them are smart, but not so smart that you’re just lost when…

>> not so smart that you’re just lost when talking to them That, BTW, is a sure sign that someone is trying to appear smarter than they really are. Having worked at 2 research labs over the course of my career I know more than my fair share of genius-level people. Without fail, they are humble about it, and can explain complex concepts in a way the rest of us can understand. This is something that just blows my mind…

No, not always. I have talked to a lot of people who are doing something I just fundamentally know nothing about, and I just cannot follow them. In my experience, people who are trying to appear smart are often intentionally unhelpful when you ask them for clarification or details (though there are of course smart people who just choose to be this way…)

Re: The Myth of the Myth of the 10x Programmer

#85

Post by Justsignedup »

gilbetron wrote: post #10

The concept of the 10x programmer seems to have been drifted from its original meaning. It isn't that there's a coder that is 10x better than a good coder. It is that a lot of people are really bad at their jobs, and a coder that thinks and learns about problems can be far better than those people. It comes from terrible "corporate drone" software developers in the 80s and 90s - the ones that would takes weeks to dev…

To add:

The most effective developers I see are those who ask the right questions. They may have lesser skills than other developers, they may be younger, less experienced, not as smart, etc. However they always produce more. Not because they can type faster, or algo better, but because they know how to leverage every aspect of their team from knowledge sharing, to knowing when to ask about refining requirements, etc.

They think about the whole problem, not just the slice given to them.

Of course there is always a spot for people who are smart enough to algo the shit out of anything, just not as team leads.

Re: The Myth of the Myth of the 10x Programmer

#87

Post by prostheticvamp »

RealityVoid wrote: post #47
BXLE_1-1-BitIs1 wrote: post #33

I remember one programmer that I characterised with "He writes a lot of code". I ended up with one of his not small routines that I replaced with a one page assembler routine in MVS NIP rather than OPEN. When reworking printing software to support multi color, I researched a commonly used subroutine though several layers of calls and replaced it with, yes, a single character constant. I lost count of the many legacy…

I do not think 10x means "churns out code" but rather "produces results". And by this metric, by golly, there are a couple 10x out there for sure.

I think OP here was asserting that he was 10x in comparison to that guy, as being much more efficient.

Re: The Myth of the Myth of the 10x Programmer

#88

Post by lonelappde »

mjw1007 wrote: post #60
jimbokun wrote: post #42

Here is your 10x programmer: https://norvig.com/sudoku.html "In this essay I tackle the problem of solving every Sudoku puzzle. It turns out to be quite easy (about one page of code for the main idea and two pages for embellishments) using two ideas: constraint propagation and search." If you gave this task to an "average" developer, how long would it take for them to implement? How many lines of code would it be? Wo…

I'm sure Norvig is very good, but I think the sudoku webpage is presenting a finished program in an idealised way, not recording the process he used to write it, false starts and all. (It seems likely to me that there were some false starts, because eliminate() returns either `values` or False, when both of its callers would be just as happy if it returned True or False.)

> returns either `values` or False, when both of its callers would be just as happy if it returned True or False.)

That's pythonic.

You don't convert from a data type to Boolean.

Re: The Myth of the Myth of the 10x Programmer

#89

Post by nearmuse »

remmargorp64 wrote: post #3

10X programmers DO exist. They aren't just a myth, and they aren't just about knowing when to buy vs build, or when to use a particular framework or toolkit, or how to "mentor" other developers. Chris Sawyer wrote 99% of the code for RollerCoaster Tycoon in x86 assembly language, with the remaining one percent written in C. RollerCoaster Tycoon was a beautiful game which still stands the test of time to this day. The…

It appears to me that there's a catch. I think those 10x developers can't be 10x out of their domain(s). You never know as well how does each individual prepare for any particular job, how much self-education effort they are amortizing.

Re: The Myth of the Myth of the 10x Programmer

#90

Post by duaoebg »

gilbetron wrote: post #10

The concept of the 10x programmer seems to have been drifted from its original meaning. It isn't that there's a coder that is 10x better than a good coder. It is that a lot of people are really bad at their jobs, and a coder that thinks and learns about problems can be far better than those people. It comes from terrible "corporate drone" software developers in the 80s and 90s - the ones that would takes weeks to dev…

I'm easily 10x a good programmer, probably more.

It's all I do, it's all I'll ever do. I'm not a balanced person and I'm ok with that.

Post reply on HN