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Programmer Productivity

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Meta: Powerpoint

• Powerpoint was used in the making of this presentation.– No animals were harmed, however.

• Open source grammar is just starting.

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Complicated (Twana Lee)

• Lines of code/epoch– Epoch often being a month

• Communication decreases productivity.– “Individual productivity decreases with the

increasing need to communicate.  It is important to note that human interaction is a big variable  in software engineering.”

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Third World Perspective

• Juliet Muchavhaira Harare:– “Generalists are not productive.”– Provide training, and have people do

specialized tasks.

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Extreme “I” mode

• One person in one place.– Deviations produce complexity.

• Geographical distribution.• Large number of people.

• Personal experience:– Tools (language, graphics library, math

library)• Math library was put onto Source Forge as part of

a linear algebra library.

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Productivity and extreme “I” mode

• As Twana Lee said, communication decreases productivity.

• At school, I have completed entire project for four people.– Both successful.– When someone tried to contribute, the project

suffered.

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“I” mode language

• Easy to add features.– In Java, many people deplore lack of operator

overloading. I just implement it quickly.

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“I” mode projects

• Linux. Linus Torvalds.– Outstandingly productive.– Wrote Git in addition to Linux.

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“C” mode

• BSD– Many contributors.– No “named star”.

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Degrees

• Not necessarily correlated to productivity!– Both Belford University and Stanford

University could produce a “Linus Torvalds”.– Home schooled legends (dropped out of

college):• Bill Gates• Bram Cohen

• Still, Google and Microsoft on the hunt for PhD’s.– Kai-Fu Lee caused