

Do 10x Programmers Exist? Says Who? - Edmontonian
http://medium.com/@rheinmainwein/do-10x-programmers-exist-says-who-283138a8f454

======
dalke
"there are certain people in every profession who stand head and shoulders
above their colleagues"

The analogy bloodletting is quite good. If the above statement is true, then
there are certainly bloodletters who are 10x bloodletters. Their patients are,
of course, not 10x better at recovering.

An obvious analogy in programming is that high variability exists for all
measurements. Eg, if quality is measured by LOC then some may produce 10x more
code than others, even if the 10x is not meaningful for outcomes.

The summary of the issue by gnat at
[http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/179616/a-good...](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/179616/a-good-
programmer-can-be-as-10x-times-more-productive-than-a-mediocre-one) is quite
good. I find McConnell's argument more defensible, and distrust the modality
argument made by Bossavit.

~~~
Edmontonian
this is silly, the comparison to bloodletters was made to undercut the
assertion that people's experience is a reasonable way to evaluate ideas, but
human beings rely on experience at all times to evaluate. You're trying to
justify his analogy by using it in a different way than he intended.

It seems to be a fairly common experience in different professions that
certain people are better than others. I guess you'd disagree that Einstein
didn't stand head and shoulders above others in physics? Need I insult you by
mentioning the big names in computer science? and other fields.

Going back to bloodletting, if you insist on using it in a different way than
GB intended in his trollish response, I'm sure you know the whole profession
has been discredited, therefore it's not really logical to look for a
practitioner from a contemporary point of view who stood head and shoulders
above his peers.

~~~
dalke
Certainly, experience is a reasonable way to evaluate ideas, but that doesn't
mean the evaluation is valid. I agree that the bloodletting example was meant
to undercut the assertion. I also think the assertion - judging only on
experience - is incorrect, and that the example is a valid one. We have many
examples where experience lead to incorrect conclusions.

By experience, Aristotle argued that things in motion come to rest. Everyone
knew that ... until Galileo, further codified by Newton. One's experience can
be wrong. Hence the reason for software usability research. See "Making
Software", edited by Greg Wilson, for lay results of some of that research.
Here's an example of a more direct, empirical study:
[http://neverworkintheory.org/2011/10/24/an-empirical-
compari...](http://neverworkintheory.org/2011/10/24/an-empirical-comparison-
of-the-accuracy-rates-of-novices-using-the-quorum-perl-and-randomo-
programming-languages.html) .

You write "human beings rely on experience at all times to evaluate." We also
use comparison testing, as with that paper link I gave you. A hope is to
minimize preconceptions based on one's experience. We see this in the medical
field all the time, where we find that even single blind testing can unduly
affect the results.

We also use prediction to evaluate. Einstein predicted a certain bending of
light around the sun, which wasn't based on experience.

Therefore, I place a weak meaning to "human beings rely on experience at all
times to evaluate." We use it to guide our understanding, but also use other
techniques besides experience to verify the correctness of our understanding.

If you read my link you'll see that I disagree with Bernhardt's statement. I
believe he is guided by Bossavit's work, which argues that there's only been a
single test of the 10x principle. Bossavit's essay has two arguments: 1)
modalities in the papers show that this is not an established method, and 2)
the citations of McConnell all refer to a single study from the early days of
software engineering. If you read McConnell's response, you'll see the
complaint that Bossavit, by only focusing on McConnell's citations, ignored
other studies from the field that McConnell used to draw his conclusion, but
which were not in the essay. As I wrote, I object to the modality analysis, as
it must surely have a high false positive rate.

But my disagreement is based on research summarizes which have tested the 10x
concept, and not strictly on my own experience.

My own observations is that the great majority of practitioners are disdainful
of any sort of empirical testing, and will argue that experience always trumps
research. I read this exchange as being yet another example of that. I can see
why Bernhardt would want to close off the exchange early - it's pointless to
have an exchange about research topic X when the other person doesn't even
think it needs to be a research topic, doesn't even understand the basic
topic, and hasn't bothered to research it.

The correct answer would have been to point to McConnell's rebuttal of
Bossavit's statement, at
[http://www.construx.com/10x_Software_Development/Origins_of_...](http://www.construx.com/10x_Software_Development/Origins_of_10X_%E2%80%93_How_Valid_is_the_Underlying_Research_/)
, as pointed to in that StackOverflow link.

For what it's worth, bloodletting is still in use, though only for a couple of
diseases; hemochromatosis and polycythemia being the main two. See for example
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25175510](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25175510)
. Hence it's not true that "the whole profession has been discredited."

------
Bahamut
Whether they exist is a separate argument from arguing with a person - the
person may have given a bad argument, but that does not necessarily discredit
the claim.

This is not a terribly great article.

~~~
Edmontonian
It is a separate argument, but they are related because the question
eventually arises, "how do you prove that such a programmer exists."

