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I once spoke to a guy that literally did not understand the lifetime scope of local variables nor how simple field assignment worked (a.x = y). I don't mean thi

I once spoke to a guy that literally did not understand the lifetime scope of local variables nor how simple field assignment worked (a.x = y). I don't mean this in an esoteric, edge-case, way, but quite literally. I asked him why he didn't hire some devs to do the work for him, and his answer was "most devs are terrible and I've not found people that are as good as me". The downward range goes very, very deep. And that's of people that actually do end up shipping something that "works", somehow. I've personally rewritten an app in less than a week that had two devs on it for over 6 months. Their deliverable didn't really work at all, even after the 1+ minute loading time (Win32 app).

vinceguidry 9y ago
> I've personally rewritten an app in less than a week that had two devs on it for over 6 months. Their deliverable didn't really work at all, even after the 1+ minute loading time To be fair, a lot of that six months was probably just nailing down the requirements. Your rewrite enjoyed having that design work already done. I'd argue that building applications is 90% design, 10% code. The code part can balloon to a greater fraction if the developers are not competent enough of course.
- MichaelGG 9y ago
  That's possible. But more likely, given they included over 100MB of system32 binaries with the app, they just didn't know what they were doing.
- acdha 9y ago
  The only time I've had improvements on that scale, it felt almost like cheating: the previous consulting company had spent ~8 months coding but the developers didn't understand functions or how to do a SQL WHERE constraint. Simply moving redundant code into an include file and getting rid off all of the cases where they were looping over some massive cross product looking for a record ID was good for ~4 orders of magnitude response time reduction and allowed completing about half the functionality for a net negative 90% lines of code. Given how many clients that company had, the main conclusion I draw is that as an industry focusing on helping the .1x people improve is more likely to make a noticeable difference than chasing the other end of the spectrum.
  - BoiledCabbage 9y ago
    Whatever people thing of flashy trends, there is true value in pair programming. The unstructured spread of not just knowledge, but how to think about programming. The lack of true apprenticeship, fellowship, mentorship is an incredible disservice to our industry. The number of people who all need to rediscover the same lessons the hard way wastes so much programmer capital.
    - redblacktree 9y ago
      I completely agree, but I think it feels to business people like you're doubling their costs.
  - flukus 9y ago
    > Given how many clients that company had, the main conclusion I draw is that as an industry focusing on helping the .1x people improve is more likely to make a noticeable difference than chasing the other end of the spectrum. Do you think that's possible? More often than not the .1x people don't seem to care either.
    - acdha 9y ago
      Not always but I do think there are organizational contributing factors: some people will see inefficiency and try to do something about it but others might just roll up their sleeves and do what they're told (maybe after unsuccessfully trying to change things a few times). That's the group I think could be helped given changes in support & incentives.

vinceguidry 9y ago

> I've personally rewritten an app in less than a week that had two devs on it for over 6 months. Their deliverable didn't really work at all, even after the 1+ minute loading time To be fair, a lot of that six months was probably just nailing down the requirements. Your rewrite enjoyed having that design work already done. I'd argue that building applications is 90% design, 10% code. The code part can balloon to a greater fraction if the developers are not competent enough of course.

MichaelGG 9y ago
That's possible. But more likely, given they included over 100MB of system32 binaries with the app, they just didn't know what they were doing.
acdha 9y ago
The only time I've had improvements on that scale, it felt almost like cheating: the previous consulting company had spent ~8 months coding but the developers didn't understand functions or how to do a SQL WHERE constraint. Simply moving redundant code into an include file and getting rid off all of the cases where they were looping over some massive cross product looking for a record ID was good for ~4 orders of magnitude response time reduction and allowed completing about half the functionality for a net negative 90% lines of code. Given how many clients that company had, the main conclusion I draw is that as an industry focusing on helping the .1x people improve is more likely to make a noticeable difference than chasing the other end of the spectrum.
- BoiledCabbage 9y ago
  Whatever people thing of flashy trends, there is true value in pair programming. The unstructured spread of not just knowledge, but how to think about programming. The lack of true apprenticeship, fellowship, mentorship is an incredible disservice to our industry. The number of people who all need to rediscover the same lessons the hard way wastes so much programmer capital.
  - redblacktree 9y ago
    I completely agree, but I think it feels to business people like you're doubling their costs.
- flukus 9y ago
  > Given how many clients that company had, the main conclusion I draw is that as an industry focusing on helping the .1x people improve is more likely to make a noticeable difference than chasing the other end of the spectrum. Do you think that's possible? More often than not the .1x people don't seem to care either.
  - acdha 9y ago
    Not always but I do think there are organizational contributing factors: some people will see inefficiency and try to do something about it but others might just roll up their sleeves and do what they're told (maybe after unsuccessfully trying to change things a few times). That's the group I think could be helped given changes in support & incentives.