On 10/31/06, Devdas Bhagat <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: <snip>
Cue reference to The Mythical Man Month. A good programmer is 10 times as productive as an average one. Nationality doesn't matter.
I agree with Devdas on the notionality angle; luckily melanin does not seem to play a role at all. :-) Personally, as a manager (hic) I have been victimized by absolute doofuses and veritable wallys - from across the spectrum of pogrommers of various tongues and nationalities *and* gender. On the contrary, I have also had the pleasure of working with programmers of stature like a 64 year old enthu cultlet from Vietnam and a 13 year old LISP programmer (a ruski child that I bumped into in Harold something library in Chicago) - probably, the best programmer that I have ever personally known . Fascinating memories...
Also, 10 average programmers can't replace one good one because you have the overhead of interperson communication (55 distinct pairs).
I agree; not only that - on a related note, with a few good programmers (how I HATE the phrase 'software engineers') one can actually attract more good folks and actually end up having a good team (with a healthy guru-shishya parampara). __r, who just retrieved a 900 page printout of random hieroglyphics and alphanumerics (some bloke had *actually* managed to print a coredump); these scavenged papers are good to feed the papyrus hungry kids at home. Longlive the clueless. -- http://www.qsl.net/vu2sro/ "Mathematics has given economics rigor, but alas, also mortis." -- Robert Heilbroner
