Steve Jobs claimed the best coders are 100x better than avg. Still true today?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5383894

by wmilesn • 13 years ago

6 17 13 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Steve Jobs said in his 1995 'Lost' interviews that in general, "the range between average and the best is at most 2-1. In software, the difference between average and the best is 50-1 maybe 100-1."

Does this ratio still hold true today given the proliferation of equalizing tools such as jQuery (or even Javascript for that matter), Rails, Mongo, Chrome, Sublime, Codecademy, Stack Overflow, Coursera, [EC2, Heroku], etc.

itsybaev• 13 years ago

It depends in what) Some "coders" are just the best at pretending that they are the best LOL Proof: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5066813

zerohp• 13 years ago

In my opinion, it's even more true than it was 18 years ago.

The "equalizing" tools help the average programmer when everything works well, but they make it significantly more difficult for them when problems arise. Today's tools have given us many leaky abstractions.

iends• 13 years ago

There's a lot of peer reviewed software engineering research to suggest what Steve Jobs said is true, long before he said it.

http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/7559/are-there-s...

Tangaroa• 13 years ago

100-1 might be an exaggeration, but the knowledge of different tools, methods, and patterns and how to apply them gives the experienced programmer the ability to produce code that does more, more quickly, and with fewer side effects than the inexperienced programmer. There is also a matter of natural talent: The best software engineers can design software that the average programmer would not be able to develop to the same quality if given years to work on it.

To give an anecdote, the place where I most recently worked had two developers who had been there since the beginning, a software engineer and another coder. The engineer on a bad day could quadruple the output of myself and the other guy in terms of both the number of changes and their value to the project.

orangethirty2• 13 years ago

I'm currently working in a system that seems to have been written by neanderthals. Global variables everywhere, non-descriptive variable names, functions 500 LOC long, no main program loop, etc. It is written in Python, but my god, at this point its fucking Latin to me. Have spend two days trying to decipher it in order to bring an offline system back online (the system is what makes the company money). Realized its just easier to re-write this pile of shit into a program that's less than 500 LOC. Yes, from 5000+ LOC, to around 500. It will now be maintainable, and modular (and fucking readable). Tell me now, how much more is that worth?

PS. It was written by bad PHP code monkeys who lied about knowing Python (much less how to program).

lifeisstillgood4• 13 years ago

Any chance of a looksie at the code? Off the record?

orangethirty2• 13 years ago

Doing so would mean that I value your curiosity more than I value my client, their business, their employees, my family, and the well being of everyone who depends on that system. So, no. And it's not cool to ask, either.

lifeisstillgood4• 13 years ago

My view is value as opposed to ability

Like a soccer player, some are x% better than others yet get paid 100x because that extra x% is able to win more games

Similarly a top developer may only be a bit better than you but that difference, when applied within a solid engineering company, can lead to business results 100x greater.

Measuring that is hard, getting it in a raise negotiation even harder.

coldtea• 13 years ago

jQuery, Node, Sublime and Stack Overflow as equalisers?

They don't even narrow the gap by 1/10 of an inch.

segmondy• 13 years ago

Absolutely.

ibudiallo• 13 years ago

I am sure Steve jobs wasn't referring to the quality of code produced. I would say he was talking about the results that where produced. So the tool you use might make it easier to work with. But if you are creating a highly optimized useless product it is a waste of time.

VikingCoder• 13 years ago

See Fact 2 from Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering by Robert Glass.

There's a PDF online, but I suspect it's not legit.

bschiett• 13 years ago

Things have changed a lot - more tools that allow bozos to get into engineering these days. There are just more wannabe engineers now so the % that is good is just smaller.

Steve Jobs claimed the best coders are 100x better than avg. Still true today?

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