3 ms·
Ask HN: Programmer Productivity as a Drake Equation?
I sometimes think of programmer productivity as being able to model as a Drake Equation:
how well you know a prog lang
X
how concise or powerful that prog lang
X
how well you know the editor/toolchain
X
how powerful your machine
X
how much/little interrupted
X
how much/little distracted
X
how many relevant "variables" & constraint factors are fresh in your brain's registers/caches
X
applying lots of little "best practices" in your workflow
X
stimulant abuse (CAFFEINE, PEOPLE! CAFFEINE! sheesh)
anybody else? thoughts? better / more refined versions of this equation/mousetrap?
- pillefitz 3y agoYour factors are tech focused, but almost always what's more important: Are you working on the correct problem and do users care?
- MikeTheRocker 3y agoThat seems like a separate concern from productivity though, no? Whether you build the right thing is distinct from whether you produce a thing.
- syngrog66 3y agoagreed! but I think @pillefitz had a fair point too. both of you are right, just on diff planes. tactical productivity vs strategic level. near term vs long term? I did mean tactical/near-term
- jstx1 3y agoI want to add a technical factor - the thing that slows me down the most is lack of knowledge about peripheral operational details - what all the configuration files do, how my repository is templating something from a different repository, how all the deployment steps get executed etc. It’s a lot of details, many systems, some of which you only touch rarely so it’s very easy to lose track of things.
- kratom_sandwich 3y agoSame equation, different framing: What you're saying is that programmers are producing according to a Cobb-Douglas Production function with output elasticities of 1. Only caveat: in this setup, the production function has increasing returns to scale, i.e. doubling all the inputs (simulants, power of the machine, ...) more than doubles the output. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobb%E2%80%93Douglas_production_function https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobb%E2%80%93Douglas_productio... [2] https://jigjids.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/cobb-dauglas-tanproj.pdf https://jigjids.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/cobb-dauglas-tan...
- revskill 3y agoNothing above is the cause of real productivity. To me, it's about FUN. Without fun, your productivity is of course low.
- joshxyz 3y agoare we talking about views drake or scorpion drake, i prefer the latter.
- muzani 3y agoMy favorite equation is just productive programmer → happy programmer happy programmer → productive programmer It's a feedback loop though "happy" and "productive" are all complex equations in their own right. Also there's a soft cap on productivity and happiness.
- b20000 3y agowhy do you care about productivity?