Re: Programming Language Productivity: The Stupidity of Programmers

From: Gerry Quinn (gerryq_at_indigo.ie)
Date: 11/18/03 

Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 08:37:22 GMT

In article <6wd6brml99.fsf@serveur4.labri.fr>, Robert STRANDH
<strandh@labri.fr> wrote:
>In this particular case, I do not know, but my experience is that
>people overestimate the importance of these issues. In fact, it is
>rare that anyone even takes the time to make a rough risk analysis,
>i.e., the estimate of potential loss and potential gain. Take a
>simple example: many of my students stick to a very small subset of
>very basic Emacs commands. Observing some random student during a
>three hour session on the computer, I estimate conservatively that
>more than half an hour was wasted due to unnecessary typing.
>Estimating conservatively again that a random student spend 12h per
>week typing, this amounts to a waste of 2h per week, or around a full
>week of work per year. I seriously doubt that it would take more than
>a total of a full-time week to learn enough Emacs to save a week per
>year. Thus, the investment pays off in less than a year. Yet, few
>people even bother making such an estimate.

The estimate is dubious, because you assume that the student is not
thinking about the problem while he types. Typing speed is or should be
almost irrelevant to programmer productivity.

(Why don't your students use a proper GUI development environment
anyway?)

- Gerry Quinn

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