That's a bit off topic cause indeed you refer to greatness in one's
profession/occupation/hobby but in any case, i remember the article you
mentioned and the whole thesis it talks about. There was at least one
Israeli weekend newspapers article, probably about the relevant
translated book that talked about this.
The name is Malcolm Gladwell and the following link is about the book
that talks about that idea:
(hebrew) http://simania.co.il/bookdetails.php?item_id=688839
his web site:
http://www.gladwell.com/index.html
Boaz.
Shachar Shemesh wrote:
Hetz Ben Hamo wrote:
My question is simple: When does the "developer" experience starts
ticking? (I'm not talking about any specific language here). Do the
years of writing those small programs/scripts count as a "developer
years"? or does the clock starts ticking when I'm a full time programmer?
Partiality of occupation is hardly a factor, but experience is. I
don't have the link, (I think it was on slashdot a while back), but
someone once claimed that the difference between a programmer with
greatness potential and actual great programmers is X hours of
experience (I don't remember what X was, but it translated to about 3
or 5 years of full time job experience). The article claimed that the
same X applies to other areas too (the article used the Beatles as a
primary example).
My point is that in order to realize your potential in any field, you
need to invest a huge amount of time practicing it. This is almost
impossible to do unless you make it your full time occupation. From
personal experience, I think the article's quoted X may even be a
little on the low side.
So, if you did mostly system tasks, but did about 10% development, you
will see how, for practical reasons, that leaves very little of your
actual development experience.
I should point out that the article talks about greatness. Assuming
you have the potential to become a great programmer, this is a
requirement for becoming great actually happening. Personally, I pride
myself on seeing programmers, in certain cases total novices, and
saying to myself "he has the potential". They are not great
programmers, but you can see that with enough experience, they will
be. That said, even those that do not possess the potential for
"greatness" advance significantly with experience. At a guesstimate,
about 60% of the population can become acceptable quality programmers
given enough experience (of course, initially they will suck) and a
supporting environment ("supporting" includes not accepting mediocre).
Of course, most of those will quit, because programming is a horrid
job to do if you don't like it, but this is just to point you as to why
Shachar
--
Shachar Shemesh
Lingnu Open Source Consulting Ltd.
http://www.lingnu.com
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