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Well, if the author kindof hasn't seen it, I guess I should ignore this stuff: Boehm, Barry W., and Philip N. Papaccio. 1988. "Understanding and Controlling So

Well, if the author kindof hasn't seen it, I guess I should ignore this stuff: Boehm, Barry W., and Philip N. Papaccio. 1988. "Understanding and Controlling Software Costs." IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering SE-14, no. 10 (October): 1462-77. Boehm, Barry, 1981. Software Engineering Economics, Boston, Mass.: Addison Wesley, 1981. Boehm, Barry, et al, 2000. Software Cost Estimation with Cocomo II, Boston, Mass.: Addison Wesley, 2000. Boehm, Barry W., T. E. Gray, and T. Seewaldt. 1984. "Prototyping Versus Specifying: A Multiproject Experiment." IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering SE-10, no. 3 (May): 290-303. Also in Jones 1986b. Card, David N. 1987. "A Software Technology Evaluation Program." Information and Software Technology 29, no. 6 (July/August): 291-300. Curtis, Bill. 1981. "Substantiating Programmer Variability." Proceedings of the IEEE 69, no. 7: 846. Curtis, Bill, et al. 1986. "Software Psychology: The Need for an Interdisciplinary Program." Proceedings of the IEEE 74, no. 8: 1092-1106. DeMarco, Tom, and Timothy Lister. 1985. "Programmer Performance and the Effects of the Workplace." Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Software Engineering. Washington, D.C.: IEEE Computer Society Press, 268-72. DeMarco, Tom and Timothy Lister, 1999. Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams, 2d Ed. New York: Dorset House, 1999. Mills, Harlan D. 1983. Software Productivity. Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown. Sackman, H., W.J. Erikson, and E. E. Grant. 1968. "Exploratory Experimental Studies Comparing Online and Offline Programming Performance." Communications of the ACM 11, no. 1 (January): 3-11. Sheil, B. A. 1981. “The Psychological Study of Programming,” Computing Surveys, Vol. 13. No. 1, March 1981. Valett, J., and F. E. McGarry. 1989. "A Summary of Software Measurement Experiences in the Software Engineering Laboratory." Journal of Systems and Software 9, no. 2 (February): 137-48. (References from http://www.construx.com/10x_Software_Development/Origins_of_10X_%E2%80%93_How_Valid_is_the_Underlying_Research_/ http://www.construx.com/10x_Software_Development/Origins_of_...)

jdlshore 14y ago
Have you read those references? Or are you just quoting them blindly? Laurent Bossavit has read them, and he reports that they are, for the most part, reporting on each other and on anecdotes. There is no actual, scientific evidence for the "10x programmer." He writes up his search for the evidence in his book "The Leprechauns of Software Development." It's a fascinating look at how a supposedly-rational group of people has taken a myth and blown up into well-known "fact."
- igouy 14y ago
  Have you read those references? Or are you just quoting Laurent Bossavit blindly?
  - jdlshore 14y ago
    I've read and understood the reference I've provided (Bossavit), and I've also read and understood the reference justin_vanw provided (McConnell), so no, I'm not quoting Bossavit blindly. After reading both, I found Bossavit much more convincing. In addition to meticulously following the chains of references back to the original research, Bossavit also examines how science is done and what is required in order for a claim to become established scientific fact. His conclusion is that the evidence for the 10x claim is "quite weak." Here's my summary of his material from the last time this came up ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4118034 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4118034 ). There's much more to Bossavit's research than my quotes here, so if you disagree, please read and rebut his work directly, not just these quotes. "How strong is the support conferred to the 10x claim by the best-reputed list of references, for a reader persistent enough to follow the chain of citations back to primary sources? "Based on our close reading of the “10x files”, we can now answer: quite weak. "Not a single one of the references is to a replication, in the scientific sense of the term, of the original exploratory experiment. "The empirical data is in general quite old, most if not all of it predating widespread use of the Internet - which we can safely expect to have wrought major changes in programming practice. "None of the studies address the question of construct validity, that is, how meaningful it is to speak of an individual programmer’s productivity, and if it is meaningful, whether the experimental measurements line up adequately with that meaning." [1] [1] The Leprechauns of Software Engineering explores what science is and how we distinguish between fact and folklore in software engineering. It specifically explores the 10x claim, and determines that it's folklore. http://leanpub.com/leprechauns http://leanpub.com/leprechauns
    - igouy 14y ago
      > so no, I'm not quoting Bossavit blindly As far as McConnell; as for the other references, aren't you taking Bossavit's claims on trust?

jdlshore 14y ago

Have you read those references? Or are you just quoting them blindly? Laurent Bossavit has read them, and he reports that they are, for the most part, reporting on each other and on anecdotes. There is no actual, scientific evidence for the "10x programmer." He writes up his search for the evidence in his book "The Leprechauns of Software Development." It's a fascinating look at how a supposedly-rational group of people has taken a myth and blown up into well-known "fact."

igouy 14y ago
Have you read those references? Or are you just quoting Laurent Bossavit blindly?
- jdlshore 14y ago
  I've read and understood the reference I've provided (Bossavit), and I've also read and understood the reference justin_vanw provided (McConnell), so no, I'm not quoting Bossavit blindly. After reading both, I found Bossavit much more convincing. In addition to meticulously following the chains of references back to the original research, Bossavit also examines how science is done and what is required in order for a claim to become established scientific fact. His conclusion is that the evidence for the 10x claim is "quite weak." Here's my summary of his material from the last time this came up ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4118034 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4118034 ). There's much more to Bossavit's research than my quotes here, so if you disagree, please read and rebut his work directly, not just these quotes. "How strong is the support conferred to the 10x claim by the best-reputed list of references, for a reader persistent enough to follow the chain of citations back to primary sources? "Based on our close reading of the “10x files”, we can now answer: quite weak. "Not a single one of the references is to a replication, in the scientific sense of the term, of the original exploratory experiment. "The empirical data is in general quite old, most if not all of it predating widespread use of the Internet - which we can safely expect to have wrought major changes in programming practice. "None of the studies address the question of construct validity, that is, how meaningful it is to speak of an individual programmer’s productivity, and if it is meaningful, whether the experimental measurements line up adequately with that meaning." [1] [1] The Leprechauns of Software Engineering explores what science is and how we distinguish between fact and folklore in software engineering. It specifically explores the 10x claim, and determines that it's folklore. http://leanpub.com/leprechauns http://leanpub.com/leprechauns
  - igouy 14y ago
    > so no, I'm not quoting Bossavit blindly As far as McConnell; as for the other references, aren't you taking Bossavit's claims on trust?