Programmer productivity, or lack thereof

In his posting, “No Silver Programmers,” my dear friend (and SD Times columnist) Larry O’Brien takes on the age-old chestnut, “5% of programmers are 20x more productive than the other 95%,” recently repeated by Bruce Eckel in his commencement address for Neumont University.

I have the greatest respect for both Larry and Bruce, and therefore, I’ll say that I generally agree with both of them. Except that in his post, Larry writes, “the significant thing is not that some professional programmers are awesome, it’s that some professional programmers suck.”

I would amend that to say, “the significant thing is not that some professional programmers are awesome, it’s that most professional programmers suck.” Perhaps I’m just jaded.

Read both posts. The discussion is illuminating.