6 ms·

You know, there is a joke that 90% of the developers think that they're better than average. :)

szemet 9y ago
"90% of the developers think that they're better than average" Median. It can happen that 90% of programmers literally better than the average.
- mnm2 9y ago
  The few bad/worse developers are then 10% and would have to be really bad
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    Is that unbelievable?
- buremba 9y ago
  This is part of the joke. It can be true but it's almost impossible to have this kind of distribution among developers.
- raverbashing 9y ago
  > It can happen that 90% of programmers literally better than the average. While mathematically true, in practice almost impossible
- raverbashing 9y ago
  > It can happen that 90% of programmers literally better than the average. While mathematically true, in practice almost impossible
edem 9y ago
This comment is useless since you don't state anything, don't refute anything and add no value.
zem 9y ago
you can thank that one guy who wrote a 10000 line php function to validate email addresses.
- sethrin 9y ago
  10000 lines might not be enough. I'm not sure that it's possible to determine whether something is a valid email address other than trying to send mail to it. If you haven't read the RFCs, they're pretty much a nightmare. The HTML5 spec has this little gem: > This requirement is a willful violation of RFC 5322, which defines a syntax for e-mail addresses that is simultaneously too strict (before the "@" character), too vague (after the "@" character), and too lax (allowing comments, whitespace characters, and quoted strings in manners unfamiliar to most users) to be of practical use here.[0] [0] https://www.w3.org/TR/html5/forms.html#e-mail-state-(type=email) https://www.w3.org/TR/html5/forms.html#e-mail-state-(type=em...
  - sethrin 9y ago
    As an aside, if anyone has ever actually used comments, whitespace, or quoted strings in an email address, that would be be extremely interesting to hear about.
eropple 9y ago
That's why I said "probably." ;)
mbreese 9y ago
Another way to think about it - 50% of programmers think they are better than average. And the other 50% are. [1] [1] this assumes programmer skill is normally distributed, which I doubt.
- orclev 9y ago
  Anecdotally my experience is that for every one really good developer there's about 25 or 30 mediocre ones, and 5 or so really terrible ones. This is based mostly around what I've seen conducting interviews in my area. That is also highly variable, I did some interviews for another office (in another country) and saw ratios more like for every three good developers there were two mediocre ones, and no terrible ones. Maybe we just had a much better recruiter feeding us candidates in the other country, or maybe they just have exceptional programmers living there.
- et2o 9y ago
  Just symmetrically distributed, doesn't have to be Gaussian. I will crawl back into my hole of pedantry now.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

"90% of the developers think that they're better than average" Median. It can happen that 90% of programmers literally better than the average.

mnm2 9y ago
The few bad/worse developers are then 10% and would have to be really bad
- emodendroket 9y ago
  Is that unbelievable?
buremba 9y ago
This is part of the joke. It can be true but it's almost impossible to have this kind of distribution among developers.
raverbashing 9y ago
> It can happen that 90% of programmers literally better than the average. While mathematically true, in practice almost impossible
raverbashing 9y ago
> It can happen that 90% of programmers literally better than the average. While mathematically true, in practice almost impossible

edem 9y ago

This comment is useless since you don't state anything, don't refute anything and add no value.

zem 9y ago

you can thank that one guy who wrote a 10000 line php function to validate email addresses.

sethrin 9y ago
10000 lines might not be enough. I'm not sure that it's possible to determine whether something is a valid email address other than trying to send mail to it. If you haven't read the RFCs, they're pretty much a nightmare. The HTML5 spec has this little gem: > This requirement is a willful violation of RFC 5322, which defines a syntax for e-mail addresses that is simultaneously too strict (before the "@" character), too vague (after the "@" character), and too lax (allowing comments, whitespace characters, and quoted strings in manners unfamiliar to most users) to be of practical use here.[0] [0] https://www.w3.org/TR/html5/forms.html#e-mail-state-(type=email) https://www.w3.org/TR/html5/forms.html#e-mail-state-(type=em...
- sethrin 9y ago
  As an aside, if anyone has ever actually used comments, whitespace, or quoted strings in an email address, that would be be extremely interesting to hear about.

eropple 9y ago

That's why I said "probably." ;)

mbreese 9y ago

Another way to think about it - 50% of programmers think they are better than average. And the other 50% are. [1] [1] this assumes programmer skill is normally distributed, which I doubt.

orclev 9y ago
Anecdotally my experience is that for every one really good developer there's about 25 or 30 mediocre ones, and 5 or so really terrible ones. This is based mostly around what I've seen conducting interviews in my area. That is also highly variable, I did some interviews for another office (in another country) and saw ratios more like for every three good developers there were two mediocre ones, and no terrible ones. Maybe we just had a much better recruiter feeding us candidates in the other country, or maybe they just have exceptional programmers living there.
et2o 9y ago
Just symmetrically distributed, doesn't have to be Gaussian. I will crawl back into my hole of pedantry now.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]