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>I would love to see a scientific method to measure developer productivity that isn't ridiculously flawed in completely obvious ways. So far I haven't seen one.

by batista 14y ago

>I would love to see a scientific method to measure developer productivity that isn't ridiculously flawed in completely obvious ways. So far I haven't seen one. Well, just use the good old empirical method then. Of all the programs out there that people and businesses need to have, in what languages was the majority written? Do proponents of older, supposedly superior languages have an equal body of work to show for it? >What I care about is primarily what makes me productive. I don't care if it makes anyone else productive but there is a good chance that it might. I'm fine with that, what I tried to counter-argue was the statement "What we need isn't a new language, its a new platform which uses Lisp all the way down.".

fauigerzigerk 14y ago
Of all the programs out there that people and businesses need to have, in what languages was the majority written? Do proponents of older, supposedly superior languages have an equal body of work to show for it? The obvious flaw of this approach is that the majority of people might have written their software in a less than optimal language for reasons unrelated to productivity. Proponents of niche languages, almost by definition, never have a body of work to show that is equal to that of the mainstream languges. If they did, they would _be_ the mainstream. Or to put it more succinctly: The majority can be wrong.
- batista 14y ago
  >The obvious flaw of this approach is that the majority of people might have written their software in a less than optimal language for reasons unrelated to productivity. Proponents of niche languages, almost by definition, never have a body of work to show that is equal to that of the mainstream languges. I'm not expecting equal bodies of work. Just show something. Forget the enterprise, big companies and such. How about lone wolf programmers? Where are the Lisp gurus "beating the averages" and producing some killer stuff? 3-4 apps would suffice. For Lisp I can see very few things, statistical noise almost. Heck, even Erlang has Riak. One way to see it is: "of course Lisp doesn't have a large body of A-list programs written in it, since it has less programmers". This is your reading of the situation. Another way, though, is: "there is a reason Lisp doesn't have as much A-list programs written in it, and it's not adoption. The reason goes deeper and it also explains adoption". One explanation: Lisp was too high level for the machines of past era to run sufficiently. That explains why it didn't caught on in the past. It means that despite being conceptually better, it was a bad language for the problems most people were trying to solve (squeeze the last trace of CPU and memory juice from very constrained hardware). And now? Now other languages have the most essential of the high level features it used to have, so other factors weight more in using them over Lisp (e.g available programmers, libraries, etc). Which means again that despite being conceptually better, it is a bad language for the things people do now (front end web stuff needs JS, enterprise needs Java/.NET and Oracle/MS support, embedded needs C, web apps need Node/RoR/Django/PHP, etc). Not a single niche where Lisp is the best option. Consider eg that: Productivity = LanguageProductivity + EnvironmentProductivity. And let's take the scientific computing field. Even if Lisp, the language, has 70 productivity points over 50 for Python, the Environment for Python has 80 points (NymPu, Scipy, Sage, etc) over 20 for Lisp. So, Lisp = 70 + 20, Python = 50 + 80, hence Python wins. (The numbers are out of my ass, but you can make a similar thought experiment and, people that make it come to similar conclusions when they pick their tools. Even PG if he had to build something today he would have picked RoR, not CL). Lisp guys tend to argue that Lisp has "language productivity" of 100, but I don't think so. And even it it has it's not 2-10 times the productivity of something like Python the language. Maybe 20-30% better. In the grande scheme of things, macros don't matter that much.
  - fauigerzigerk 14y ago
    There certainly are other factors than a language's productivity. I don't dispute that at all, or I wouldn't be writing so much code in C++. But I think language popularity has very little to do with productivity or any other rational factor. Languages mostly piggyback on platforms that emerge rapidly at some point in history. C came with Unix. JavaScript and Java came with Web browsers. SQL came with relational databases. Objective-C became widely used (if not poplar) with the iPhone. PHP came preinstalled with shared web hosting. C# comes with Windows. VBA comes with Office, etc. Developers mostly just choose platforms not languages. Whoever makes the platform decides on the language and it will be "popular" regardless of how atrocious it may be. And by the way, PG is building something today and he's building it in a Lisp dialect (http://paulgraham.com/arc.html http://paulgraham.com/arc.html)

by batista 14y ago

fauigerzigerk 14y ago

Of all the programs out there that people and businesses need to have, in what languages was the majority written? Do proponents of older, supposedly superior languages have an equal body of work to show for it? The obvious flaw of this approach is that the majority of people might have written their software in a less than optimal language for reasons unrelated to productivity. Proponents of niche languages, almost by definition, never have a body of work to show that is equal to that of the mainstream languges. If they did, they would _be_ the mainstream. Or to put it more succinctly: The majority can be wrong.

batista 14y ago
>The obvious flaw of this approach is that the majority of people might have written their software in a less than optimal language for reasons unrelated to productivity. Proponents of niche languages, almost by definition, never have a body of work to show that is equal to that of the mainstream languges. I'm not expecting equal bodies of work. Just show something. Forget the enterprise, big companies and such. How about lone wolf programmers? Where are the Lisp gurus "beating the averages" and producing some killer stuff? 3-4 apps would suffice. For Lisp I can see very few things, statistical noise almost. Heck, even Erlang has Riak. One way to see it is: "of course Lisp doesn't have a large body of A-list programs written in it, since it has less programmers". This is your reading of the situation. Another way, though, is: "there is a reason Lisp doesn't have as much A-list programs written in it, and it's not adoption. The reason goes deeper and it also explains adoption". One explanation: Lisp was too high level for the machines of past era to run sufficiently. That explains why it didn't caught on in the past. It means that despite being conceptually better, it was a bad language for the problems most people were trying to solve (squeeze the last trace of CPU and memory juice from very constrained hardware). And now? Now other languages have the most essential of the high level features it used to have, so other factors weight more in using them over Lisp (e.g available programmers, libraries, etc). Which means again that despite being conceptually better, it is a bad language for the things people do now (front end web stuff needs JS, enterprise needs Java/.NET and Oracle/MS support, embedded needs C, web apps need Node/RoR/Django/PHP, etc). Not a single niche where Lisp is the best option. Consider eg that: Productivity = LanguageProductivity + EnvironmentProductivity. And let's take the scientific computing field. Even if Lisp, the language, has 70 productivity points over 50 for Python, the Environment for Python has 80 points (NymPu, Scipy, Sage, etc) over 20 for Lisp. So, Lisp = 70 + 20, Python = 50 + 80, hence Python wins. (The numbers are out of my ass, but you can make a similar thought experiment and, people that make it come to similar conclusions when they pick their tools. Even PG if he had to build something today he would have picked RoR, not CL). Lisp guys tend to argue that Lisp has "language productivity" of 100, but I don't think so. And even it it has it's not 2-10 times the productivity of something like Python the language. Maybe 20-30% better. In the grande scheme of things, macros don't matter that much.
- fauigerzigerk 14y ago
  There certainly are other factors than a language's productivity. I don't dispute that at all, or I wouldn't be writing so much code in C++. But I think language popularity has very little to do with productivity or any other rational factor. Languages mostly piggyback on platforms that emerge rapidly at some point in history. C came with Unix. JavaScript and Java came with Web browsers. SQL came with relational databases. Objective-C became widely used (if not poplar) with the iPhone. PHP came preinstalled with shared web hosting. C# comes with Windows. VBA comes with Office, etc. Developers mostly just choose platforms not languages. Whoever makes the platform decides on the language and it will be "popular" regardless of how atrocious it may be. And by the way, PG is building something today and he's building it in a Lisp dialect (http://paulgraham.com/arc.html http://paulgraham.com/arc.html)