3 ms·

He doesn't say that the 10x programmer is a myth. Just that there isn't academic research that proves it to be true, which hardly means that it's wrong.

Lawtonfogle 12y ago
The real question is if we should expect their to be evidence behind it. And considering the funding, the opprotunities for research, the difficulty of doing a study someone won't easily pick apart, and the community push to verify it at a peer reviewed level, I am not surprised we don't have peer reviewed research. For starters, I've yet to see a good way to measure productivity.
crusso 12y ago
Right. In order to "debunk the myth of the 10x programmer", I'd expect to see research that shows that the phenomenon isn't true - not just that research wasn't modern enough or wasn't completely relevant to modern methods of programming. In my experience, there are 10x programmers out there. I've known a couple in my 20 professional years who exceeded that. The fact that there isn't research proving it only tells me that I don't know distribution of that kind of talent, not that it completely doesn't exist. You could say similar things about the notion of "debunking" the exponential cost of defects.
- Dirlewanger 12y ago
  This is very much one of those things that after a couple years in the industry you'll just intuitively have a grasp on. And when one has a large sample size of similar intuitions stemming from experience...well, it's hard to completely discredit such notions.
GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
Not a lot of academic research that proves bigfoot exists either.
- Lawtonfogle 12y ago
  Not a lot of evidence that the tree outside my window functions similar to trees that have been studied. Would you suggest that the assumption that it does is as reliable as the assumption bigfoot exists?

3 ms·

He doesn't say that the 10x programmer is a myth. Just that there isn't academic research that proves it to be true, which hardly means that it's wrong.

by adamzerner 12y ago

Lawtonfogle 12y ago
The real question is if we should expect their to be evidence behind it. And considering the funding, the opprotunities for research, the difficulty of doing a study someone won't easily pick apart, and the community push to verify it at a peer reviewed level, I am not surprised we don't have peer reviewed research. For starters, I've yet to see a good way to measure productivity.
crusso 12y ago
Right. In order to "debunk the myth of the 10x programmer", I'd expect to see research that shows that the phenomenon isn't true - not just that research wasn't modern enough or wasn't completely relevant to modern methods of programming. In my experience, there are 10x programmers out there. I've known a couple in my 20 professional years who exceeded that. The fact that there isn't research proving it only tells me that I don't know distribution of that kind of talent, not that it completely doesn't exist. You could say similar things about the notion of "debunking" the exponential cost of defects.
- Dirlewanger 12y ago
  This is very much one of those things that after a couple years in the industry you'll just intuitively have a grasp on. And when one has a large sample size of similar intuitions stemming from experience...well, it's hard to completely discredit such notions.
GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
Not a lot of academic research that proves bigfoot exists either.
- Lawtonfogle 12y ago
  Not a lot of evidence that the tree outside my window functions similar to trees that have been studied. Would you suggest that the assumption that it does is as reliable as the assumption bigfoot exists?