For those ignoring this article on account of the title (but who nonetheless are reading this comment): this article is not about mythical 10x programmers, which I agree is a boring debate. Instead, it’s a good discussion of aspects of what one knows and how one works that can make progress go quickly (or slowly).
There is a way to stress simplicity that I like to call “opportunistic programming”. Basically at every development step, the set of features to implement is chosen in order to have the maximum impact on the user base of the program, with the minimum requirement of efforts.
I think this is why Clojure has been so successful. Rich Hickey embodies this idea of simplicity, and you can see it in his design decisions in Clojure and Datomic and edn. Even though many people (Haskellers, perhaps) might disagree with some of those decisions, you can’t deny that they were chosen to emphasize simplicity.
For those ignoring this article on account of the title (but who nonetheless are reading this comment): this article is not about mythical 10x programmers, which I agree is a boring debate. Instead, it’s a good discussion of aspects of what one knows and how one works that can make progress go quickly (or slowly).
I think this is the best quote:
I think this is why Clojure has been so successful. Rich Hickey embodies this idea of simplicity, and you can see it in his design decisions in Clojure and Datomic and edn. Even though many people (Haskellers, perhaps) might disagree with some of those decisions, you can’t deny that they were chosen to emphasize simplicity.
A great case for
practices.