On Tue, 31 Oct 2006 23:20:59 +0530, Ramjee Swaminathan wrote: > 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 wonder what makes one programmer good, and another average. I think I used to be pretty terrible, and now I'm less so. I think some studies have found that variance between programming teams is a lot bigger than variance within teams, which could be explained either by selection (good programmers quit rather than work on a bad team) or training (bad programmers working on a good team get better). In my case, pair-programming and no-code-ownership at AirWave helped me a great deal. I wonder if the availability of such environments varies from nation to nation --- even if nationality doesn't matter, what nations you've lived in might. > I agree with Devdas on the notionality angle; luckily melanin does not > seem to play a role at all. :-) I don't know --- I don't program that well when I'm sunburned! > 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... Are you still in touch with them? What are they up to now?
