
Does Having an Anime Profile Picture Make You a Better Programmer? - wh313
https://h313.info/blog/github/anime/google-cloud/2020/07/31/does-having-an-anime-profile-picture-make-you-a-better-programmer.html
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eat_veggies
When I switched to an anime profile picture I became ostracized at my job, and
that boosted my productivity 3x due to fewer distractions. I have never felt
more lonely in my life but my manager is happy with my performance so it's
worth it imo

~~~
wrkronmiller
This is satire right?

~~~
gorkish
Satire is dead; you were hearing from eat_veggies.

~~~
dagav
Satire isn't dead, it's the distinction between real life and satire that's
dead

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Darmody
This reminds me of this joke. A guy enters and IRC channel and says:

\- Hello, is this an anime channel? \- Yes \- How do I patch KDE2 under
FreeBSD?

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missblit
Depends on the anime.

Yoku Wakaru Gendai Mahou (never watch this): Terrible programmer

Battle Programmer Shirase: Good programmer

Serial Experiments Lain: Godly programmer

~~~
dilandau
Lain is certified midwit tier. It appeals to the r/iamverysmart types.

~~~
boomer_joe
And you don't seem to understand

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dlivingston
As someone who has been involved in academia in some fashion for over ten
years, here are my observations (note: this is _heavy_ on subjectivity):

1\. Those involved academically or professionally with some form of STEM, seem
to be, on average, less physically attractive than the average population. If
this is true, we can say that there is an (loosely) inverse relationship
between physical attractiveness and intelligence.

2\. People who have hyper-lower confidence in their attractiveness tend to
have profile pictures of things other than themselves (anime, The Joker,
wolves, flowers, etc.). If this is true, then there is a positive correlation
between physical attractiveness and propensity to use a non-facial PFP.

3\. Therefore, if 1 and 2 are true, then it follows that intelligence is
roughly positively correlated with having an anime PFP.

~~~
truckerbill
That's not entirely watertight - it's not necessarily intelligence that's
correlated with looks; maybe its just influencing what people pick as their
major. Maybe attractive people do less STEM because they naturally are more
socialised growing up, and spend less time shut away. That results in less
STEM knowledge, but not necessarily less intelligence.

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ipnon
Natural language aptitude seems to predict programming ability better than
mathematical aptitude.[1] Should we be surprised that fans of foreign language
TV seem to have some talent for programming?

[1]
[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-60661-8#Sec15](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-60661-8#Sec15)

~~~
throwanem
If they prefer dubs, maybe.

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lousken
The title should be more like Does having anime profile pictures mean you're
more active on github?

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throwanem
While the chosen line of inquiry is intrinsically intriguing and offers
promise of potentially very many valuable results, this initial effort uses
activity as a proxy for skill, a metric which seems potentially confounding
without the ability to demonstrate strong correlation between quantity and
quality of contribution.

I'd like to see edits detailing such a correlation, or else the use of a more
reliable metric. Unfortunately, as the matter stands, the weak metric used
renders the strong conclusion in the manuscript unsupportable, and I cannot
approve the manuscript for publication in this form.

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benjaminbachman
Tldr: there is no significant correlation between having an anime profile and
amount of GitHub activity.

A few days ago HN had a thread extolling the virtues of publishing negative
results... And here we are!

~~~
gwern
FWIW, I think it may be statistically-significant eyeballing the graph.
Activities, being counts bounded at 0, can't be normal, and these are _very_
non-normal data, so the t-test is wrong; if he wanted a p-value,
[https://docs.scipy.org/doc/scipy/reference/generated/scipy.s...](https://docs.scipy.org/doc/scipy/reference/generated/scipy.stats.wilcoxon.html#scipy.stats.wilcoxon)
would've been more appropriate, and I'd bet the p-value will be noticeably
smaller.

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torusenthusiast
The answer is an unequivocal yes

~~~
exolymph
Came here to post this. Even shorter version: [https://external-
preview.redd.it/8YFpZC7_jK0aN_fZN6oSq1FqTdr...](https://external-
preview.redd.it/8YFpZC7_jK0aN_fZN6oSq1FqTdrP_6rK6kF3fDJWIeE.jpg?auto=webp&s=a054666460fb5442da47c1eb65f58f6de741ee46)

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kache_
Who would you trust more to be able to build out a piece of software to
specification? A greasy nerd with an anime T shirt? Or a senior 3 principal
enterprise software engineer

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danielscrubs
The greasy nerd will be done after a month with something barely working and
he will say it’s a masterpiece. It will lack the login functionality but he
will say someone else can handle those banalities.

The senior 3 principal software engineer will create a 20-something deep layer
cake in Java after 3 years. It will be done perfectly to specification and
will be as bland as sand.

No other programmers will want to touch either, and that good folks, is the
state of programming.

~~~
ehnto
You're forgetting the outdoorsy profile picture, who will build roughly to
spec in half the time using last years tooling. The client will be happy, the
code will be maintainable, but whenever something goes wrong they'll be
hiking.

~~~
danielscrubs
Nah, that’s just the senior engineers self-image.

In reality he created a dumpster-fire because he was stressed (bad management)
and went on vacation before the fumes took him. ;)

If you do it over and over, you double your salary because suddenly you’re an
IT-consultant.

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renewiltord
Anime profile pictures in CSGO mean you are a hacker.

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barnaclejive
Can this analysis be re-run for profile pictures that have your kid(s) in
them?

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manishsharan
Not clicking or viewing this article improved my productivity. Does that count
?

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SSchick
Does using your furry avatar on github/slack count? :3

~~~
throwanem
Anecdotally, I feel like the furry/infosec correlation may be somewhat
stronger than the furry/dev correlation. That said, I doubt the difference
would be all that large.

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kjeetgill
The conversation here around the headline is pretty disappointing for HN.

It's a silly premise but the attempt at answering this question by scraping
and correlating github activity and profiles is pretty great fun and hackery.

The conclusion, for those skimming the comments:

> That provides a p-value of 0.2371. We now have to conclude that the higher
> average we got isn’t statistically significant, since our p-value of 23.7%
> doesn’t meet the traditional 5% cutoff. Therefore, we must once again
> acquiesce to Betteridge’s law, and adopt our null hypothesis, that having an
> anime profile picture does not necessarily correlate with your abilities as
> a programmer.

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nathanaldensr
> _Therefore, we must once again acquiesce to Betteridge’s law, and adopt our
> null hypothesis, that having an anime profile picture does not necessarily
> correlate with your abilities as a programmer._

~~~
jt2190
Also:

> _As for being a “better programmer,” we’ll just equate being better with
> having more activity on GitHub._

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dilandau
If you want to 10x, I suggest an anime username as well.

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rocket_the_dog
It makes me a better programmer.

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briga
Just like how wearing Air Jordan's makes you run faster and putting on glasses
makes you a better reader

