4 ms·

The use of easy-to-obtain metrics with little or no predictive value has interesting parallels in all sorts of places.

by pmccool 16y ago

jamesbritt 16y ago
"The use of easy-to-obtain metrics with little or no predictive value has interesting parallels in all sorts of places." I was just wondering if there were parallels for this in programming. The obvious might be the various approaches and "methodologies" to programmer or team productivity based on dubious or non-existent hard data. But I'm more wondering if there are tools or techniques that don't get any accolades (like, say, MVC or TDD or the framework of the week) but have a peculiar synergistic effect that ends up providing significant (and possibly counterintuitive) value. What's the "Shane Battier" of software development practices? And how would you know?
- pmccool 16y ago
  I definitely think there are parallels in programming. The lines of code metric comes to mind.
- pook 16y ago
  Larry Osterman's "MEASURING TESTERS BY TEST METRICS DOESN'T" essay has some good bits on where metrics give perversely wrong conclusions. http://blogs.msdn.com/larryosterman/archive/2004/04/20/116998.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/larryosterman/archive/2004/04/20/11699...
- InclinedPlane 16y ago
  I'd say good design. Refactoring has known benefits, but good design is similar to refactoring while skipping the middle step of having a cruddy design to start with. Developers who tend to write better designed code may not be appreciated for it. Consider that better design often requires considerable forethought and may take longer to implement than a typical "first thing that comes to mind" satisficing type design. Also, the lack of future bugs and lack of future difficulty in expanding and adapting good code may result in a lack of attention for that code (people may not appreciate its subtlety and elegance and merely think it solves an easy problem to start with). The end result may be that the developer takes longer to resolve fewer bugs and implement fewer bits of functionality than other developers while the benefits of higher quality design and code might be largely invisible. Discerning developers may be able to recognize and appreciate higher quality coders, but in environments with short-sighted or overly bureaucratic management I'm sure this sort of problem exists.
  - pmccool 16y ago
    Trouble is, "good design" is pretty hard to quantify. It's much much harder to quantify than things like LOC, or whether this milestone or that was reached. Another difference is that a basketball game has a definite, qualitative outcome. That, at least, can be measured. With software development you don't even have that luxury.
    - eru 16y ago
      Did you mean, "a definite, [quantitative] outcome"?
      - pmccool 16y ago
        Yes. Oops.
    - InclinedPlane 16y ago
      Quite so, there's no objective measure for good software, other than perhaps sales (and it's enormously difficult to trace sales data back to individual contributions from one out of dozens, hundreds, or thousands of devs). Which is why software development is still very much a craft. And a pretty esoteric one at that. It often takes the subjective judgment of a known good developer to determine the quality of another developer's contribution. The unfortunate side effect of this is that the really good dev shops (populated by talented devs even in management roles) are working at levels many, many orders of magnitude beyond what the run of the mill dev shops are capable of. There are a great many development projects managed or overseen by non-developers, and many of those people lack the basic skills necessary to tell the difference between gold and utter crap. It's no surprise then that so much "enterprise-y" development is little more than snake oil, VBA scripts and MS access duct taped together and sold for millions of dollars to big companies who don't have the skills to know they got taken for a ride. Software development is only just barely scratching its way out of its alchemy and astrology phase. There are far more untalented, unskilled hacks out there than there are honest craftsmen.
raganwald 16y ago
Bertie Wooster comes out of 21 Club late one night and sees Oofy Prosser staring intently at the pavement out front. What's up? I lost my favourite collar stud. Right here? No, somewhere down the street. Then why are you looking for it here? The light's better over here. * That being said, Bayesian Search works a little like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_search_theory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_search_theory
- hugh3 16y ago
  Slightly off-topic: any idea if that was originally by PG Wodehouse? I've heard it in a zillion forms but never with Bertie Wooster.
  - altano 16y ago
    Looks like all the other Wodehouseisms from the show... shrug
  - raganwald 16y ago
    No, I like Wodehouse, so I used Bertie and Oofy in my retelling of the joke. But I'm pretty sure it's much, much older. I don't actually recall it occurring in any of the short stories, novels, or Fry and Laurie dramatizations.
    - hugh3 16y ago
      Ah, fair enough. I like PG Wodehouse too, which is why I asked. I can't claim to have read all the books though; I'm trying to space them out over a decade or so of long plane journeys.

The use of easy-to-obtain metrics with little or no predictive value has interesting parallels in all sorts of places.

by pmccool 16y ago

The use of easy-to-obtain metrics with little or no predictive value has interesting parallels in all sorts of places.

"The use of easy-to-obtain metrics with little or no predictive value has interesting parallels in all sorts of places." I was just wondering if there were parallels for this in programming. The obvious might be the various approaches and "methodologies" to programmer or team productivity based on dubious or non-existent hard data. But I'm more wondering if there are tools or techniques that don't get any accolades (like, say, MVC or TDD or the framework of the week) but have a peculiar synergistic effect that ends up providing significant (and possibly counterintuitive) value. What's the "Shane Battier" of software development practices? And how would you know?

pmccool 16y ago
I definitely think there are parallels in programming. The lines of code metric comes to mind.
pook 16y ago
Larry Osterman's "MEASURING TESTERS BY TEST METRICS DOESN'T" essay has some good bits on where metrics give perversely wrong conclusions. http://blogs.msdn.com/larryosterman/archive/2004/04/20/116998.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/larryosterman/archive/2004/04/20/11699...
InclinedPlane 16y ago
I'd say good design. Refactoring has known benefits, but good design is similar to refactoring while skipping the middle step of having a cruddy design to start with. Developers who tend to write better designed code may not be appreciated for it. Consider that better design often requires considerable forethought and may take longer to implement than a typical "first thing that comes to mind" satisficing type design. Also, the lack of future bugs and lack of future difficulty in expanding and adapting good code may result in a lack of attention for that code (people may not appreciate its subtlety and elegance and merely think it solves an easy problem to start with). The end result may be that the developer takes longer to resolve fewer bugs and implement fewer bits of functionality than other developers while the benefits of higher quality design and code might be largely invisible. Discerning developers may be able to recognize and appreciate higher quality coders, but in environments with short-sighted or overly bureaucratic management I'm sure this sort of problem exists.
- pmccool 16y ago
  Trouble is, "good design" is pretty hard to quantify. It's much much harder to quantify than things like LOC, or whether this milestone or that was reached. Another difference is that a basketball game has a definite, qualitative outcome. That, at least, can be measured. With software development you don't even have that luxury.
  - eru 16y ago
    Did you mean, "a definite, [quantitative] outcome"?
    - pmccool 16y ago
      Yes. Oops.
  - InclinedPlane 16y ago
    Quite so, there's no objective measure for good software, other than perhaps sales (and it's enormously difficult to trace sales data back to individual contributions from one out of dozens, hundreds, or thousands of devs). Which is why software development is still very much a craft. And a pretty esoteric one at that. It often takes the subjective judgment of a known good developer to determine the quality of another developer's contribution. The unfortunate side effect of this is that the really good dev shops (populated by talented devs even in management roles) are working at levels many, many orders of magnitude beyond what the run of the mill dev shops are capable of. There are a great many development projects managed or overseen by non-developers, and many of those people lack the basic skills necessary to tell the difference between gold and utter crap. It's no surprise then that so much "enterprise-y" development is little more than snake oil, VBA scripts and MS access duct taped together and sold for millions of dollars to big companies who don't have the skills to know they got taken for a ride. Software development is only just barely scratching its way out of its alchemy and astrology phase. There are far more untalented, unskilled hacks out there than there are honest craftsmen.

raganwald 16y ago

Bertie Wooster comes out of 21 Club late one night and sees Oofy Prosser staring intently at the pavement out front. What's up? I lost my favourite collar stud. Right here? No, somewhere down the street. Then why are you looking for it here? The light's better over here. * That being said, Bayesian Search works a little like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_search_theory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_search_theory

hugh3 16y ago
Slightly off-topic: any idea if that was originally by PG Wodehouse? I've heard it in a zillion forms but never with Bertie Wooster.
- altano 16y ago
  Looks like all the other Wodehouseisms from the show... shrug
- raganwald 16y ago
  No, I like Wodehouse, so I used Bertie and Oofy in my retelling of the joke. But I'm pretty sure it's much, much older. I don't actually recall it occurring in any of the short stories, novels, or Fry and Laurie dramatizations.
  - hugh3 16y ago
    Ah, fair enough. I like PG Wodehouse too, which is why I asked. I can't claim to have read all the books though; I'm trying to space them out over a decade or so of long plane journeys.