The Worst Programmer I Know
The Worst Programmer I Know
The great thing about measuring developer productivity is that you can quickly identify the bad programmers. I want to tell you about the worst programmer I know, and why I fought to keep him in the team.
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Not sure why this post doesn't have a ton of comments. It illustrates the fundamental problem with KPIs and performance measurement. When it comes to measuring human production with digital tools, because the binary measure is so restrictive, it leaves out a universe of values and information that is just ignored as a result. And this very often has dramatic consequences.
Posts tend to generate a lot of comments by:
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being funny, spurring people to try to be funnier (usually failing); or,
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by being interactive, spurring people to answer a prompt in the premise of the post; or,
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by being controversial, spurring people to argue.
This isn't particularly funny or interactive. And it's not very controversial either; I think most programmers will agree with this premise.
Did my best with #3 but I continue to suspect most of the people in these fediverses are very young and therefore inexperienced.
I've stated an opinion that aligns with what I've read in the hacker news discussion and the responses are aggressive.
Cargo cult is strong here. No discussions will form while the ditto heads carry the majority.
I'm 45 years old with over 20 years of IT experience. I felt I've been very reasonable in my responses. Meanwhile, you've accused me of "making shit up", and dismissed someone with experience in machine learning with a background in algorithms and high performance computing as "not a software engineer".
You're not being controversial, you're just being a troll.
You feel dismissed, I say classified.
IT experience is not equivalent to software developer experience.
Machine learning and running high performance are hand in hand.
But machine learning is not software engineering, it tool usage. It's not the same job title.
I do know why you are taking this comment personally since it wasn't even directed at you but the other responses.
I do know why you are taking this comment personally since it wasn’t even directed at you but the other responses.
I assume you meant that you don't know why, but it's because you're not arguing in good faith. You dismiss anyone that disagrees as being young and inexperienced, you accused someone of being a bot simply because they wrote 3 small paragraphs in a 12 minute period, and now you've dismissed all experience if it's not a specific type of software development role.
As soon as its apparent that someone isn't just blindly accepting your arguments, you go straight to ad hominem. If you can't form an argument without resorting to insults, you've already lost...
You at not point attempt to refute any of my points.
You want to feel attacked, nothing I can do about that.
I wasn't dismissing you but I will now.
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Most experienced developers already agree with you
Myopic decision-making is a standard human fault. The problem is that some Deciders have wildly disproportionate effects on everyone else. (i.e. leadership roles across business and government)
We can’t fix individual ignorance and prejudice to a level that will resolve the issue, so maybe we need to invest our efforts in forcibly distributing power to make sure one person (or a small group) can’t unilaterally ruin thousands or millions of lives.