Things I’ve learned in my 20 years as a software engineer

Re:Things I’ve learned in my 20 years as a software engineer by lucumo on Friday October 08, 2021 @07:03AM (#28797849)

Presumably a 1x programmer is an average programmer. The type who does his job acceptably. He doesn't create huge problems, nor solve them. He is a fine team player and team member, but not a leader. Nobody despairs when he leaves, and he will be forgotten after a few months.

Basically, the majority of programmers.

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Re:Things I’ve learned in my 20 years as a software engineer by heipei on Friday October 08, 2021 @07:28AM (#28798008)

This was about minus 1x, so having a negative impact. And yes, these do exist.

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Re:Things I’ve learned in my 20 years as a software engineer by mushishi on Friday October 08, 2021 @07:56AM (#28798209)

Now that I think about it, the worst code seem to lead to situations where the top developers can really show their value.

I mean if the code base is quite good and is kept that way, then a normal developer can deal with it quite well. But if you get a legacy mess, then the hard-core developer can make really drastic changes that have enormous value to the maintainability, future development and bug-wise.

If a normal developer tries to tackle that mess, it's easy to get into trouble and drown in the sea of opportunities and not see the big picture and take a proper road plan to improve things.

So in a way -1 developers enable the top developers to show the gap between them and the normal devs.

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