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There are smart programmers and dumb programmers, clean programmers and messy programmers. From your perspective, it looks like there is an inverse correlation

There are smart programmers and dumb programmers, clean programmers and messy programmers. From your perspective, it looks like there is an inverse correlation but that is only because of Berkson's paradox. The programmers who are both smart and clean don't hang out with you. They have more interesting projects to work on, or higher-paid jobs at other companies/industries. At the same time, you don't hang out with programmers who are both stupid and messy. They don't get hired at the same companies you work for, they don't have the skills needed to work on the same projects you work on, their articles don't get to the front page of Hacker News and so on.

ninetyninenine 3y ago
>The programmers who are both smart and clean don't hang out with you. Not true. I've literally stated in my post I've seen them. Your statement is illogically contradictory to my statement. >From your perspective, it looks like there is an inverse correlation but that is only because of Berkson's paradox. Possible. But I'm not sure how you can state this as fact without knowing where I've worked or having data to back it up. Everyone is going off subjective opinions here and no one can be sure who is definitively right or wrong. I feel you're the one who's biased here. Unless you have something more then anecdotal data to back that statement up I feel it's just your own two cents against mine. Which is fine, anecdotally both are valid. >They don't get hired at the same companies you work for, they don't have the skills needed to work on the same projects you work on, their articles don't get to the front page of Hacker News and so on. Right. So what companies have I worked for? You can make this statement because you know? Anecdotal evidence or not, you literally have no basis here.
- saint_fiasco 3y ago
  I didn't intend to make a statistically rigorous statement or anything, I just thought your anecdote was a funny application of Berkson's paradox. The fun part is that I don't need to know how smart or clean you are, or how cool the companies you work for are. As long as you subjectively perceive people to be cleaner/messier than you, or smarter/dumber than you, Berkson's paradox will still hold no matter what your objective, absolute levels of those traits are. For example, it's perfectly possible that the programmers you consider to be dumb but clean or smart but messy are still both smarter and cleaner than me. Berkson's paradox applies to me too, after all, and we don't hang out together.
  - ninetyninenine 3y ago
    What if the sample of the people I hang out with are a completely accurate representation of the entire domain? Would the paradox still apply?
    - saint_fiasco 3y ago
      When it comes to smart/clean, maybe you can hang out with enough people to get an accurate sample. But then you would find other paradoxes, like maybe you'd find that the smart/clean programmers you meet have a worse personality or are less athletic than the dumb/messy ones. The only way for it to not apply at all, for every possible trait, is if you hang out with the entire planet at the same time.
      - ninetyninenine 3y ago
        Wouldn't personality and athleticism be off topic though? I'm only referring to two traits here: intelligence and code sloppiness. Does this paradox still apply in this case? Or is this paradox some kind of broad thing not relegated to a specific correlation?
        fragmede 3y ago
        They're off topic, but the point is you'll find correlation where you want to.
        ninetyninenine 3y ago
        Possible. But also possible that no bias influenced my observation. And who's to say that the correlation I happen to want isn't real?
        fragmede 3y ago
        I am. I mean, it could be you're right. everyone's entitled to their own opinions though. some people think the moon is made of cheese, for example. but the reality is the inherent bias in your sample set is too large to be ignored.
- fragmede 3y ago
  > But I'm not sure how you can state this as fact without knowing where I've worked or having data to back it up. Because you haven't met them. Where you've worked is irrelevant. Either a) they exist, and you've not met them because you work somewhere that excluded them, or b) all of the places you've worked hired equally from the pool of all programmers, and didn't happen to find any. without knowing where you've worked, I can state for a fact that where you've worked had hiring standards, explicit or implicit, affected by internal and external factors. Thus, B is less likely than A, despite having no data on where you've worked. It's not possible you've worked at every company in every subfield there is to our industry, and thus you've not encountered every type of programmer there is. Programmers for ransomware groups are gonna be a much different group of individuals than from those programming VR goggle firmware, are different from PhD candidates writing code to never get reused, to programmers for HFT desks, for instance. There are 4 quadrants: . dumb | smart messy __1___|___2___ clean 3 | 4 Your theory is that only 2 and 3 exist, and that 1 and 4 are impossible. The world is wide, and I've met programmers in 1 and 4, with as much evidence as you do, anecdotal evidence. If you do have data to back up your claim, I'd love to be proven wrong! Because while my habits put me into group 2, I'm definitely more in group 1.
  - ninetyninenine 3y ago
    But as my sample size grows as I work for more companies by probability the data becomes more and more inline with the actual population. Who's to say my sample isn't a good representation of the actual population? Edit: in response to your edit of quadrants. I never said they don't exist. I stated that there are correlations. And I explicitly stated that despite the correlations I've seen examples of all types of programmers. Even programmers outside of the correlations. Of course as stated before, these correlations are anecdotal. Just my experience. I don't think it's necessarily invalid despite that.
    - fragmede 3y ago
      Simply on the basis that sampling bias exists, I'll say your sample isn't a good representation of the actual population. Presuming you're human and haven't lived multiple lives simultaneously, it's just not possible you've worked in every subfield of our industry, meeting every possible variation of programmer. You didn't get your current job from first principles. There's bias, just from job-1 on how you got your current job, nevermind your entire whole background as a human being. A coder in India lives in a wholly different culture than someone in Eastern Europe is different from a North Korean is different than a San Francisican programmer, never mind the actual work they're doing; firmware, web crud, kernel, LLM. Different types are going to be more prevalent in different areas, and unless you've got a truly random sampling of workplaces, there's gonna be some bias in action.

ninetyninenine 3y ago

>The programmers who are both smart and clean don't hang out with you. Not true. I've literally stated in my post I've seen them. Your statement is illogically contradictory to my statement. >From your perspective, it looks like there is an inverse correlation but that is only because of Berkson's paradox. Possible. But I'm not sure how you can state this as fact without knowing where I've worked or having data to back it up. Everyone is going off subjective opinions here and no one can be sure who is definitively right or wrong. I feel you're the one who's biased here. Unless you have something more then anecdotal data to back that statement up I feel it's just your own two cents against mine. Which is fine, anecdotally both are valid. >They don't get hired at the same companies you work for, they don't have the skills needed to work on the same projects you work on, their articles don't get to the front page of Hacker News and so on. Right. So what companies have I worked for? You can make this statement because you know? Anecdotal evidence or not, you literally have no basis here.

saint_fiasco 3y ago
I didn't intend to make a statistically rigorous statement or anything, I just thought your anecdote was a funny application of Berkson's paradox. The fun part is that I don't need to know how smart or clean you are, or how cool the companies you work for are. As long as you subjectively perceive people to be cleaner/messier than you, or smarter/dumber than you, Berkson's paradox will still hold no matter what your objective, absolute levels of those traits are. For example, it's perfectly possible that the programmers you consider to be dumb but clean or smart but messy are still both smarter and cleaner than me. Berkson's paradox applies to me too, after all, and we don't hang out together.
- ninetyninenine 3y ago
  What if the sample of the people I hang out with are a completely accurate representation of the entire domain? Would the paradox still apply?
  - saint_fiasco 3y ago
    When it comes to smart/clean, maybe you can hang out with enough people to get an accurate sample. But then you would find other paradoxes, like maybe you'd find that the smart/clean programmers you meet have a worse personality or are less athletic than the dumb/messy ones. The only way for it to not apply at all, for every possible trait, is if you hang out with the entire planet at the same time.
    - ninetyninenine 3y ago
      Wouldn't personality and athleticism be off topic though? I'm only referring to two traits here: intelligence and code sloppiness. Does this paradox still apply in this case? Or is this paradox some kind of broad thing not relegated to a specific correlation?
      - fragmede 3y ago
        They're off topic, but the point is you'll find correlation where you want to.
        ninetyninenine 3y ago
        Possible. But also possible that no bias influenced my observation. And who's to say that the correlation I happen to want isn't real?
        fragmede 3y ago
        I am. I mean, it could be you're right. everyone's entitled to their own opinions though. some people think the moon is made of cheese, for example. but the reality is the inherent bias in your sample set is too large to be ignored.
fragmede 3y ago
> But I'm not sure how you can state this as fact without knowing where I've worked or having data to back it up. Because you haven't met them. Where you've worked is irrelevant. Either a) they exist, and you've not met them because you work somewhere that excluded them, or b) all of the places you've worked hired equally from the pool of all programmers, and didn't happen to find any. without knowing where you've worked, I can state for a fact that where you've worked had hiring standards, explicit or implicit, affected by internal and external factors. Thus, B is less likely than A, despite having no data on where you've worked. It's not possible you've worked at every company in every subfield there is to our industry, and thus you've not encountered every type of programmer there is. Programmers for ransomware groups are gonna be a much different group of individuals than from those programming VR goggle firmware, are different from PhD candidates writing code to never get reused, to programmers for HFT desks, for instance. There are 4 quadrants: . dumb | smart messy __1___|___2___ clean 3 | 4 Your theory is that only 2 and 3 exist, and that 1 and 4 are impossible. The world is wide, and I've met programmers in 1 and 4, with as much evidence as you do, anecdotal evidence. If you do have data to back up your claim, I'd love to be proven wrong! Because while my habits put me into group 2, I'm definitely more in group 1.
- ninetyninenine 3y ago
  But as my sample size grows as I work for more companies by probability the data becomes more and more inline with the actual population. Who's to say my sample isn't a good representation of the actual population? Edit: in response to your edit of quadrants. I never said they don't exist. I stated that there are correlations. And I explicitly stated that despite the correlations I've seen examples of all types of programmers. Even programmers outside of the correlations. Of course as stated before, these correlations are anecdotal. Just my experience. I don't think it's necessarily invalid despite that.
  - fragmede 3y ago
    Simply on the basis that sampling bias exists, I'll say your sample isn't a good representation of the actual population. Presuming you're human and haven't lived multiple lives simultaneously, it's just not possible you've worked in every subfield of our industry, meeting every possible variation of programmer. You didn't get your current job from first principles. There's bias, just from job-1 on how you got your current job, nevermind your entire whole background as a human being. A coder in India lives in a wholly different culture than someone in Eastern Europe is different from a North Korean is different than a San Francisican programmer, never mind the actual work they're doing; firmware, web crud, kernel, LLM. Different types are going to be more prevalent in different areas, and unless you've got a truly random sampling of workplaces, there's gonna be some bias in action.