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> 3. Programmer productivity > [...] Why? Because the actual programming is not the main time sink. In a business, what takes time is to actually figure out wh
by AceJohnny2 4y ago
> 3. Programmer productivity
> [...] Why? Because the actual programming is not the main time sink. In a business, what takes time is to actually figure out what the task really is. So something like a 10% or 20% "productivity boost" won't even register.
This reminds me of Amdahl's Law [1], about how a performance optimization (parallelism) has small returns because the performance improvement only affects a small portion of the overall process.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl's_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl's_law
- AceJohnny2 4y agoCounterpoint is that a language that allows rapid iteration/prototyping (and thus, increases "programmer productivity") is useful precisely because it helps figuring out what the task really is.
- substation13 4y ago100%. This annoys me so much in Java debates. The argument goes something like "It doesn't matter that Java is verbose and requires hundreds of files because the IDE generates them for you". And this is true... when you write the code. But the real friction is when you must read or change the code in response to new requirements, which is exactly what we as engineers spend the bulk of our time doing.