5 ms·

"In fact, one of the few studies that people actually believe is the "some programmers are 10x better" study, and that was actually fairly well conducted - many

by barik 14y ago

"In fact, one of the few studies that people actually believe is the "some programmers are 10x better" study, and that was actually fairly well conducted - many students were given identical tasks, and a fairly large amount of time to do them." Can you by chance point me to this paper? I'd like to add it to my paper collection, since most of the studies I've seen concerning programmer variability use members of the workforce. I'm not aware of the one involving students, but such replication studies are easy to miss. Thanks!

dalke 14y ago
http://forums.construx.com/blogs/stevemcc/archive/2011/01/09/origins-of-10x-how-valid-is-the-underlying-research.aspx http://forums.construx.com/blogs/stevemcc/archive/2011/01/09...
- barik 14y ago
  I'm not sure how that link helps me. I've already seen many of those studies. Which one satisfies, "students were given identical tasks, and a fairly large amount of time to do them"? That is the specific study I am searching for to add to my list of papers. Did you give me this link because you were referring to Humphrey (A Discipline for Software Engineering), or something else? I can track down Humphrey, but it will take me a few days, since it's a physical book.
  - dalke 14y ago
    My apologies. I misread what you were looking for. Mostly by not actually reading what you wrote. :( Perhaps the previous author was thinking of the Prechelt "An Empirical Comparison of .." paper? http://page.mi.fu-berlin.de/prechelt/Biblio/jccpprtTR.pdf http://page.mi.fu-berlin.de/prechelt/Biblio/jccpprtTR.pdf . Section 5.7 has "work times" for Java and C/C++ programmers using well-observed times. However, that is not for a "fairly large amount of time."
jdlshore 14y ago
There is no such study. It's a well-regarded and popular myth. Laurent Bossavit does a masterful job of researching the origins of this myth (and others) in his new book The Leprechauns of Software Engineering, available on LeanPub [1]. [1] http://leanpub.com/leprechauns http://leanpub.com/leprechauns

by barik 14y ago

dalke 14y ago

http://forums.construx.com/blogs/stevemcc/archive/2011/01/09/origins-of-10x-how-valid-is-the-underlying-research.aspx http://forums.construx.com/blogs/stevemcc/archive/2011/01/09...

barik 14y ago
I'm not sure how that link helps me. I've already seen many of those studies. Which one satisfies, "students were given identical tasks, and a fairly large amount of time to do them"? That is the specific study I am searching for to add to my list of papers. Did you give me this link because you were referring to Humphrey (A Discipline for Software Engineering), or something else? I can track down Humphrey, but it will take me a few days, since it's a physical book.
- dalke 14y ago
  My apologies. I misread what you were looking for. Mostly by not actually reading what you wrote. :( Perhaps the previous author was thinking of the Prechelt "An Empirical Comparison of .." paper? http://page.mi.fu-berlin.de/prechelt/Biblio/jccpprtTR.pdf http://page.mi.fu-berlin.de/prechelt/Biblio/jccpprtTR.pdf . Section 5.7 has "work times" for Java and C/C++ programmers using well-observed times. However, that is not for a "fairly large amount of time."

jdlshore 14y ago

There is no such study. It's a well-regarded and popular myth. Laurent Bossavit does a masterful job of researching the origins of this myth (and others) in his new book The Leprechauns of Software Engineering, available on LeanPub [1]. [1] http://leanpub.com/leprechauns http://leanpub.com/leprechauns