Re: What makes a (super-)programmer?

From: CTips (ctips_at_bestweb.net)
Date: 01/18/04 

Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2004 21:06:13 -0500

JXStern wrote:
> On Sat, 17 Jan 2004 10:49:01 -0500, CTips <ctips@bestweb.net> wrote:
>
>>So, what sets these peopele apart from the rest? What makes a
>>super-programmer? More important - what is keeping "average" programmers
>
>>from becoming better?

>>Here is my list of observed similarities:
>>- all of them can type fast - I'd guess 30wpm+
>
>
> Try 80wpm++
Yeah, could be that high. Of course, carpal tunnel is always a problem

>>- they are intelligent
>
> Well, yeah, but what exactly that means in this context is a little
> hard to say.

Intelligent as in Binet-Simon IQ. The ones I've talked to who have had a
formal IQ test (6 or so people) scored between 135 and 160. Which makes
some amount of sense, since I believe that they test for general problem
solving ability.

> (hmm, ever seen a gal in this category?)

No. One of them had an interesting take on this - he said, to get good
at programming, you have to become obsessive about programming. And
women tend to be way less likely to be obsessive about something as
non-social as programming.

> I daresay an XP type will be along shortly to talk about how writing
> tests is going to slow down your 100kloc target rate, and this is
> true.

I'm talking 100kloc *SHIPPABLE* - this does not include testing effort,
or code written for testing. My personal belief is that that is at least
one area where the super-programmers tend to be better than the average:
they require much less effort to get to their code to the same level of
stability.

I believe this comes from a combination of:
- they introduce *way* fewer bugs/loc in the first place.
- they test smarter - which includes writing tests that test multiple
features, writing tools to write the tests, etc.
- they isolate bugs way faster. They can quite often tell, from a
description of the bug, the probable module and type of bug.

>
> I actually have some specific stuff in mind when I talk about
> "figuring it out", and I've been fiddling with writing it up for
> several years. Guess I'm not a super-nonfiction-writer, anyway, at
> least in terms of kilo-lines-of-text.

I did some of that - see http://users.bestweb.net/~ctips. See what you
think of it. I'd love to hear your specific stuff.

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