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Originality complex, the ability to write original software and document it, is a consideration of personality more so than intelligence. Due to cultural norms

Originality complex, the ability to write original software and document it, is a consideration of personality more so than intelligence. Due to cultural norms and selection bias most people will believe the opposite because education and institutions filter only on intelligence. I recently learned that conscientiousness correlates negatively with intelligence at about -0.27 which means more than a quarter of the population can organize and architect better than highly intelligent people. This can explain why reliance upon frameworks and third party tools grows proportionally with the size of the team. A single author solving original problems will be less inclined to maintain and juggle concerns beyond the scope and control of their focus area where as larger teams are more inclined to preference administrative concerns, for example configurations and dependency management, over solving for originality.

re-thc 4y ago
It's worse than that. Education and institutions often filter on certain subsets of intelligence or just good memory. A lot of exams are a memory test. A lot of courses related to software development are either out of date or don't model the current trends / best practices.
- austin-cheney 4y ago
  The role of education is to feed the demands of industry... whatever those are. There is still need for COBOL. There is still need for C and C++. The problem is expectation management. A bachelor's in CS teaching OOP and SQL will not prepare you to write functional code, event logic, transmission control systems, and so forth. Not at all. For some god forsaken reason people believe achievement of education is like checking a box on a job application otherwise already in hand and that said education prepared them for anything. Most people lack the skills required to perform as most software platforms are designed. Remember, its all about institutionalization and intelligence only. That doesn't work. There simply aren't enough 145IQ people (2-5% of the population) in the world to fill the demand required to self-train across multiple paradigms of application design architectures. The solution provided by industry is to make it more stupid (easy) so that lower IQ people, as low as 115, can participate (about 35-40% of the population). This occurs because both education and industry only filter for intelligence and high intelligence does not correlate with organization, self-discipline, or any other form of conscientiousness. The reality is that if industry filtered for personality in preference to intelligence they could choose from 25% of the population without dumbed-down (the need for easy) software platforms. That means less tech debt, better documentation, faster time to market, more valuable/flexible products, less burn out, happier employees. It would also mean they wouldn't have to pay under performing junior developers as much as doctors, and it would make expert developers more identifiable as determined by performance compared to peers when there are fewer restrictive constraints (guardrails imposed by industries artificially easier platforms).

re-thc 4y ago

It's worse than that. Education and institutions often filter on certain subsets of intelligence or just good memory. A lot of exams are a memory test. A lot of courses related to software development are either out of date or don't model the current trends / best practices.

austin-cheney 4y ago
The role of education is to feed the demands of industry... whatever those are. There is still need for COBOL. There is still need for C and C++. The problem is expectation management. A bachelor's in CS teaching OOP and SQL will not prepare you to write functional code, event logic, transmission control systems, and so forth. Not at all. For some god forsaken reason people believe achievement of education is like checking a box on a job application otherwise already in hand and that said education prepared them for anything. Most people lack the skills required to perform as most software platforms are designed. Remember, its all about institutionalization and intelligence only. That doesn't work. There simply aren't enough 145IQ people (2-5% of the population) in the world to fill the demand required to self-train across multiple paradigms of application design architectures. The solution provided by industry is to make it more stupid (easy) so that lower IQ people, as low as 115, can participate (about 35-40% of the population). This occurs because both education and industry only filter for intelligence and high intelligence does not correlate with organization, self-discipline, or any other form of conscientiousness. The reality is that if industry filtered for personality in preference to intelligence they could choose from 25% of the population without dumbed-down (the need for easy) software platforms. That means less tech debt, better documentation, faster time to market, more valuable/flexible products, less burn out, happier employees. It would also mean they wouldn't have to pay under performing junior developers as much as doctors, and it would make expert developers more identifiable as determined by performance compared to peers when there are fewer restrictive constraints (guardrails imposed by industries artificially easier platforms).