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No. Programming is low-impact work. You can only write so many lines of code in a day. The people that are changing the world don't do it by writing code.
by kami8845 14y ago
No.
Programming is low-impact work. You can only write so many lines of code in a day. The people that are changing the world don't do it by writing code.
- whatshisface 14y agoNo. Writing is low-impact work. You can only write so many words in a day. The people that are changing the world don't do it by writing words. But wait a minute... writing well about important things is VERY high-impact work. If you are lamenting that your work is low impact, maybe you should find something other than the latest cat photo sharing enterprise knowledge framework.
- kami8845 14y agoWriting as an individual is much more potent than programming as an individual. In fact writing as an individual is often the best way to do it. Programming as an individual is often the worst way to do it, your projects are often bound in scope of what they can do. Yes amazing programmers in the past have written beautiful and feature-rich software. But the matter of the fact is, more programmers == bigger problems become solvable. Why is Google Maps so good? Because thousands of people work on it. The amount of impact any one coder has on Google Maps is tiny. That's why I don't want to be a coder when I'm 50. I want to solve large problems that require large human efforts. The bandwidth code gives me is simply too little.
- DannoHung 14y agoYou're argument is specious. Lots of very smart people work on Google Maps. You can't just buy good software by throwing more warm bodies at it. Fred Brooks was writing about that almost half a century ago.
- kabdib 14y agoStrongly disagree. A strong programmer can make hundreds of millions of dollars for a company, given the correct leverage. A good design can involve only a few tens of thousands of lines of code and start a whole new product ecosystem. I've seen it done.
- kami8845 14y agoCan you talk about the times you've seen it done. Because I haven't, and I'd love to hear more.
- kabdib 14y ago1. Multiple monitor support for the Macintosh II. This was a couple weeks of work (described to me as "five days, five hundred lines of code") with little support from management because of ship pressure. Result: /lots/ of people with more than one video card (ka-ching!) and monitor (ka-CHING!) for the next decade or so. 2. Again with Apple: The folks who decided to define a native code extension system for Hypercard; a simple system that spawned a small industry in custom XCMDs. I say "folks" here, but HC was a really small team, and it was probably just one guy. There are a couple others that come to mind, but I'm under NDA on them.
- kami8845 14y agoInteresting. Thank you for sharing.
- jimbokun 14y ago"The people that are changing the world don't do it by writing code." Like hell they don't.
- jebblue 14y agoOh man, I'm not an Apple fan but dude, think of where Apple would be without the better Steve? Seriously? Low impact? Wow. Seriously? Really? If all programmers left all countries and started our own rockin place all you "programmers are low impact" types would freakin starve.
- kami8845 14y agoPlease point me to any code Steve wrote in the last dozens of years of his life. Arguably the years where he had the biggest impact on the world. Larry & Sergey's last commits are from 2002. And they were hardcore technical guys before starting Google.