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The average Software Developer versus the good Software Developer.

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1. Most of the developers are average, that’s just mathematics. The difference between an average programmer and an excellent one can be huge. Some old studies showed that excellent programmers can be two orders of magnitude more productive than average ones. A hundred times more productive!
   You list that a good Software Developer has passion, “experience, perseverance and a bit of talent.” My four ingredients for perfection (in anything, really) are Knowledge, Skill, Drive and Time. If you know what perfection is, and you have the necessary skill, and you want to achieve perfection, then all you need is enough time. You never reach perfection, because at least one of the ingredients is unavailable in sufficient quantities.

   

   Miska

   19 May 09 at 12:59 pm
2. Hi Miska, I agree with your observation, you say

   “My four ingredients for perfection (in anything, really) are Knowledge, Skill, Drive and Time”

   I think we can even trace a parallelism

   Drive = Passion
   Time = Perseverance
   Skill = Talent
   Knowledge = Experience

   Thanks for your comment

   

   Alberto G

   19 May 09 at 1:22 pm
3. [...] El programador medio Vs El programador bueno [ENG]makinggoodsoftware.com/2009/05/19/the-average-programmer/ por elpetecan hace pocos segundos [...]

   

   El programador medio Vs El programador bueno [ENG]

   19 May 09 at 1:58 pm
4. Passion makes the difference in any profession, certainly not specific to software. Software, however, is one of those professions where you very much have to worry about having your passion, or your soul, crushed by the work itself, or the beneficiaries of the work.

   

   Andrew Badera

   19 May 09 at 1:59 pm
5. Good insight. I’ve seen similar articles relating the term “craftsmen” to the art of the trade.

   One concern that I had with the article and in general, is programmer vs developer. Those are two different things to me and maybe contribute to the perception of “average” vs “good” here.

   I categorize “programmers” as the people that do nothing but code, often their isolated in their own world and don’t care to keep up on the latest practices or technologies. Participation in the SW lifecycle is often limited to “implementation”. Often they don’t care about the users and relish the analytical challenge of a function taking in ‘x’ args and return ‘y’ objects. This is not necessarily negative within the appropriate situations.

   Were as a developer is more of a participant in other aspects of the SW lifecycle. They maybe involved in reqs, design, and how the software is used; aka “the big picture”. Often they think of themselves as a user, like a “craftsmen” does. These naturally leads them to keep abreast of the latest trends, technologies, and practices. This does not necessarily imply that they are a “SW Architect” though either. They may not be the best coder though either. Personally I prefer these types of people for the types of projects I work on since I prefer pretty dynamic projects that likely are not “maintenance”.

   Great insight from this author, I always ask an interviewee what “nerd” sites they check out or who are their “SW Gods”, looking for developers with a sincere interest in software. Any programmer can rattle off “interface vs abstract”, “What’s SOAP?”, “static vs final”, “spec x,y,z”.

   

   Scott

   19 May 09 at 2:24 pm
6. An interesting little read.

   Don’t forget the bad programmers though, they are just as numerous as the good ones… or at least numerous enough to weigh down the average.

   

   Jheriko

   19 May 09 at 8:28 pm
7. I wonder how this applies software part timers.

   I’m a physicist. Every writes some software, maybe just a 200 line data analysis script, maybe it’s a massive simulation, maybe he invents the World Wide Web.

   Yet whatever he does or she does, software is probably not their main job. It’s just a bit of fun or a chore on the side, one that ought to be done well, without taking to much time.

   Do you think your guidelines scale down?

   

   raka

   19 May 09 at 8:51 pm
8. Hi Alberto,

   Firstly, English is not my native language. So, I hope you understand my ideas regardless of my grammatical mistakes.

   I think (MHO) that:

   Drive = motivation to accomplish something. Be it, money, desire to change the world, passion, etc. So drive is not always passion… specially passion for programming or software development.

   Time = Time.
   You can be the person with the biggest perseverance in the world. But, if you are a wage slave for a big IT company, developing pieces of software comparable to nuts and bolts for that ever behind schedules big software which the final result remembers a Titanic, hardly you’ll have time to feed your passion by developing beautiful projects. And even if you have some spare time, you need remaining “brain power” too.

   Skill
   My utopian opinion is that you can reach skill with perseverance + time + drive + “brain power” + hard work. Talent appears to be a natural facility to grasp certain things; something that you were inherently born with. So, someone born with talent for programming, who never coded, will have less programming skill then someone without talent who, however, worked hard to gain programming skills.

   And, someone with programming skills and talent, but who lacks drive, which is directly linked with lack of creativity, can eventually be surpassed by some talentless purpose driven hard worker.

   knowledge
   This is a word which mean changes as the discussion scope changes.
   Some people, like Peter Drucker, saw “knowledge” like information being applied. So, when you think about an apple, your brain reunites distinct types of information (size, color, odor, taste, shape) to generate an apple in your mind. This process of reunite and apply information would be what is called “knowledge”. But this is discussion about knowledge is a never ending one.

   I think that you acquire new information, by means of experience, to generate better knowledge when necessary.

   Cheers,

   Hyperluz

   

   hyperluz

   19 May 09 at 10:01 pm
9. [code]
   if($money -->passion==true; ) {
   $person-->type=good one;
   while($sumMoney==$resources) {
   hr->buy=' i want 8 gig ram';
   hr->office='ergonimic';
   }
   if($hr->assign_staff=true) { follow_proccuredure-->'sldc'=true; }

   } else {
   $staff(extended from person)-->type='slow';
   switch($company->resources)
   low:'How you wan to paid my salary';
   low staff:' don't complain much,you paid penaut you get monkey;
   }
   sleep(24/7);
   }
   [/code]

   

   hafizan

   20 May 09 at 1:00 am
10. Umm, you are saying fairly obvious things, really. Some organizations are more capable to nurturing passionate developers than others. It’s life. That’s why one must choose with care.

    

    Dmitri

    20 May 09 at 8:42 am
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13. Yes, I agree with Dmitri. Let’s make a list of characteristics of bad programmers! I’ll start:

    1) Over-engineering a simple problem in order to look like a big shot.
    2) Inability or refusal to explain one’s solution in clear, concise terms in order to make the solution look difficult or impressive.

    What else?

    

    angel

    6 Jun 09 at 4:25 pm
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