This article, titled The Fallacy Of Cheap Programmers
was quite interesting and pretty good. I think the writer notes a lot
of points that I believe to be true. The article is missing, however,
any studies that back him up. He states
"A lot of research on programmer productivity...",
but fails to state what that research is or where is came from, so you
don't really know anything other than what the writer tells you unless
you go out looking for it yourself. Also, I'm not sure I agree with the
statement
"...believe that one programmer can be as productive as 3, let alone 5 or even 20...". Can 1 programmer be as productive as 3? Perhaps, depending on the tasks. 5? That's a strech. 20? Um, I don't think so.
All
in all, I do agree with the article. I think I'm a good programmer, and
that all comes with experience and training. I like to think that some
of the things I do today, such as programming in the beginning stages
for performance and scalability, as any good programmer would do, helps
relieve the focus of those aspects in future life-cycles of the
application production. However, not all programmers do these things,
and of course, I'm not a good enough programmer to do everything right
the first time either. I believe I do good work and can be very
productive when I want to. But how many programmers can I replace?
Sometimes 3. Sometimes ½. Sometimes not at all. It depends on the tasks
at hand and the abilities of the programmers I’m attempting to replace.