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I think it depends on the junior dev - if they 'learn' when they get their question answered, the productivity of the team over time most likely increases quite

by count 13y ago

I think it depends on the junior dev - if they 'learn' when they get their question answered, the productivity of the team over time most likely increases quite a bit; it's an 'investment' in future productivity. If they ask and don't 'learn', but simply mirror / rote regurgitate what the senior dev said, it's probably disastrous to the team's productivity both then and over time.

katbyte 13y ago
I'm currently that senior dev and i welcome any and all questions just for that reason. I'd rather spend 5-10 min helping out/teaching a junior to be a better programmer than for me to review code later that just doesn't make the cut or has some horrible mistake leading to the dev having to spend more time overall fixing it. Not only that, but i find that helping others out generally makes me a better programmer.
unclebucknasty 13y ago
Good point. And that desire to learn/understand is something that's hard to teach. Some junior devs just grow dependent and are content to stay where they are. When I was in college, I tutored CS. So, I hung out in the lab a lot and frequently helped people with programming assignments. I would always try to help them arrive at the answer vs. just giving it to them. With some people, this worked very well. They just needed a nudge or a little help framing the solution. But, with others, I could spend literally hours trying to get them there with very little progress. In some cases, I finally had to all but give them the solution and help them code it. Thing is, many of them were OK with this. So, after a time, when certain people asked a question, you kind of knew what you were in for. What surprised me, however, is that in large enterprise settings, you had teammates who were similar. I don't know if you could get away with that in a startup environment, but some enterprises are large enough that they can just "carry" some team members.

by count 13y ago

katbyte 13y ago

I'm currently that senior dev and i welcome any and all questions just for that reason. I'd rather spend 5-10 min helping out/teaching a junior to be a better programmer than for me to review code later that just doesn't make the cut or has some horrible mistake leading to the dev having to spend more time overall fixing it. Not only that, but i find that helping others out generally makes me a better programmer.

unclebucknasty 13y ago

Good point. And that desire to learn/understand is something that's hard to teach. Some junior devs just grow dependent and are content to stay where they are. When I was in college, I tutored CS. So, I hung out in the lab a lot and frequently helped people with programming assignments. I would always try to help them arrive at the answer vs. just giving it to them. With some people, this worked very well. They just needed a nudge or a little help framing the solution. But, with others, I could spend literally hours trying to get them there with very little progress. In some cases, I finally had to all but give them the solution and help them code it. Thing is, many of them were OK with this. So, after a time, when certain people asked a question, you kind of knew what you were in for. What surprised me, however, is that in large enterprise settings, you had teammates who were similar. I don't know if you could get away with that in a startup environment, but some enterprises are large enough that they can just "carry" some team members.