Re: Functional Paradigm popularity and Maths (Was: XML as a transition to s-expr)

[Paul Graham <address@hidden>]

What matters here is not just how many lines of software
are written by idiots, but how many lines of software used
by how many people.  To write this I'm using Yahoo Mail,
via Netscape, running on FreeBSD.  That's a lot of lines
of software used by a lot of people, none of it written by
idiots.

If good hacker X writes 25x more software than bad hacker Y, 
and X's software is used by 10000x more people, then X has
the same effect on the world as a quarter of a million Ys.
I think that's what David was getting at.


--- "S. Alexander Jacobson" <alex@shop.com> wrote:
> On 20 Dec 2001 jmarshall@mak.com wrote:
> > "David Simmons" <David.Simmons@smallscript.net> writes:
> > > Certainly, the vast majority of people who write software in one
> > > form or another do not have such a informal (let alone, formal)
> > > foundation.  They do, by and large, have some form of domain
> > > expertise which they are attempting to translate or express to a
> > > computer through the medium of a computer language (the
> > > man-machine-interface).
> >
> > Yes, and the vast majority of software written by such people is
> > crap.
> 
> Yes, but the vast majority of software is written by such people!
> There are 10:1 differences in productivity among various programmers.
>  It
> may be that the very productive programmers understand the formal
> foundations and formal techniques.  But:
> 
> 1. the majority of programmers don't (or else the difference would be
> smaller)
> 
> 2. the majority of dollars paid to programmers go to those that don't
> (because top programmers are rarely paid 10x lower level programmers)
> 
> 3. the majority of dollars/time spent on buying/installing
> programming
> tools is spent on these users because the licenses are per-seat not
> per
> kLOC.
> 
> 4. the majority of code is written by these programmers because even
> highly productive programmers take a speed hit in absorbing domain
> information on new projects.
> 
> > There is a prevailing myth that untrained programmers are at least
> as
> > good if not better than programmers that have had years of
> training.
> > In my experience, this is simply false.
> 
> It is false.  But it is also irrelevant.
> 
> -Alex-
> 
> ___________________________________________________________________
> S. Alexander Jacobson                   i2x Media
> 1-917-783-0889 voice                    1-212-697-1427 fax
> 
> 


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