10x Software Development - All Comments

re: Technical Debt Webinar–Archive Version Now Available

Slavo — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 12:48:59 GMT

You probably meant "available for streaming"? I didn't see a download link anywhere.

re: Managing Technical Debt: Free Webinar

Steve McConnell — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 19:19:24 GMT

@Max, Yes it will. I'll post the URL when we have it -- within a few days.

re: Managing Technical Debt: Free Webinar

Max — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 09:17:44 GMT

Will it be available on demand to download?

re: 10 Deadly Sins of Software Estimation: Free Webinar

Steve McConnell — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 20:51:43 GMT

@Mark, Yes, it should be available from the same URL after a few days.

re: 10 Deadly Sins of Software Estimation: Free Webinar

Mark Butsch — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 17:58:24 GMT

The time of the webinar is not convenient for me, will it be available on-demand afterwards?

re: 10 Deadly Sins of Software Estimation: Free Webinar

Steve McConnell — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 15:41:35 GMT

@Roberto, this webinar will be very similar to the one you saw two years ago.

re: 10 Deadly Sins of Software Estimation: Free Webinar

Roberto Liffredo — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 10:19:24 GMT

I remember a similar webinar, a couple of years ago.

I found it quite instructive, and I wanted to share it with my colleagues.

Is it the same as then, or a different one?

re: New Software Estimation Survey

Luke — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 00:15:51 GMT

I suppose a survey's the least I could do - what I've learned from Code Complete / Rapid Development / Software Estimation over the years has earned me many a dollar and saved me many a year of development anguish.

re: New Software Estimation Survey

SEO Birmingham — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 14:08:14 GMT

I will be interested in the results of this survey. It will be a good study of software estimation in practice.

re: My Books Are Now Available in Kindle, PDF, and Other Electronic Formats

Outsourcing Source Code Cost Analysis — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 17:18:42 GMT

Excellent article! In recent move to out-sourcing and remote employment were your programmer is at home or sitting on a beach in Hawaii with his laptop, it's becoming essential to play according to performance, rather than the salary or pay per hour approaches.

re: My Books Are Now Available in Kindle, PDF, and Other Electronic Formats

Nick Argall — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 07:22:31 GMT

ChrisP, try going to O'Reilly and clicking on "register my book", I'm pretty sure that they do discounts on EBooks for those who have the print editions.

re: My Books Are Now Available in Kindle, PDF, and Other Electronic Formats

Steve McConnell — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 22:10:30 GMT

@ChrisP -- not that I'm aware of, unfortunately.

re: My Books Are Now Available in Kindle, PDF, and Other Electronic Formats

ChrisP — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 19:50:28 GMT

Any discounts available for those who have already purchased print editions?

re: My Books Are Now Available in Kindle, PDF, and Other Electronic Formats

Marcel — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 13:54:13 GMT

I remember reading "Code Complete" in 1994 during a summer vacation back in the Netherlands from cover to cover. It set my software development style for years to come, and made me decide I wanted to pursue a career in software development. If it were up to me, every software developer should have it on their bookshelf.

Thanks for writing these books Steve!

re: My Books Are Now Available in Kindle, PDF, and Other Electronic Formats

Steve McConnell — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 04:16:44 GMT

@Kevin -- PSD is published by a different publisher, and they haven't made it available in electronic format yet, I'm sorry to say.

re: My Books Are Now Available in Kindle, PDF, and Other Electronic Formats

Kevin Kinnett — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 03:53:32 GMT

What about "professional software development"? Which is one of my favorites.

re: My Books Are Now Available in Kindle, PDF, and Other Electronic Formats

Fan — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 23:31:08 GMT

Oh! Thanks. I will read them all :-)

re: Why Didn’t I Like “The Social Network?”

Steve McConnell — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 19:34:37 GMT

Mark you make a good point about the moviie being neutral in its treatment of the characters. I initially liked that part of it, but after thinking about it more I didn't see the point of a movie that was neutral in its treatment. If it had really been a documentary, that would have been a virtue. But as a work of fiction loosely based on real events the neutral stance left me wondering, "Why was this story worth telling?"

re: Why Didn’t I Like “The Social Network?”

Mark Schaake — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 07:49:00 GMT

I just saw this movie a week ago and I think it is interesting that we saw the portrayal of the Winklevoss’s differently. I saw them as being portrayed as piggy-backers. There was a scene where Zuckerberg basically makes the same case you do in your post (in one of the arbitration meetings). Maybe because Zuckerberg's character had such an abrasive manner it came across as more of a lash out than a call out. I found myself (like you) desensitized to his archetypical personality and took what he said at face value. I would guess the average viewer would focus on the lash out. To me, that's part of what made this movie a really great movie - that it didn't try to take sides and force feed an opinion. This movie, more than any other in years, has made me think (and added fuel to my entrepreneurial flames).

re: Why Didn’t I Like “The Social Network?”

Steve McConnell — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 03:54:39 GMT

I actually like Facebook itself fine and use it fairly often. It doesn't seem to me that it's dehumanizing or alienating or reduces people's social interactions. I think texting, FB, online chatting, etc. just give people more ways to interact. One of the interesting thing I'm seeing with my kids is that when their friends move away they are still in regular contact with them via emaill and Facebook. That's entirely different than when I was a kid -- when a friend moved away, they were just gone. I can imagine kids who were friends when they were young planning, via FB, to apply to the same college, for example. Personally I think we're seeing better social connectedness as a result of having electronically supported interactions.

re: Why Didn’t I Like “The Social Network?”

Adam — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 16:52:49 GMT

THANK YOU, I was struggling with this same issue.

Prior to watching the movie this past weekend I had no interest in seeing it. I did not understand why people would want to see a movie about a website. Everything in the movie has been public knowledge, of course Titanic, Pearl Harbor, etc... are movies about public knowledge events as well.

I just felt the whole idea of a movie about a website to be silly. Yes, I have a facebook page but I do not really care about how it was started or about the person who started. Truthfully I find facebook to be another example of the decline in civilization where it is asking people to social online as opposed to in person. facebook, iPods, Blackberrys, iPhones, etc... have made people less social and stunted their actual ability to socialize, while also (in my opinion), have directly affected the way that people treat each other in public settings. Our society is a me first society, and most technology has been encouraging a detachment from human interaction and a reliance on electronic.

Maybe because I am so jaded by the youth of today and how they behave that The Social Network held absolutely no appeal to me and watching it only reinforced that to me.

re: Why Didn’t I Like “The Social Network?”

Earnie Philips — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 22:33:12 GMT

Your views are interesting and informative. Belonging to what would be considered a member of the older generation, I did not understand until seeing the movie what it was that drove the Face Book phenomanon. Upon reflection of that first scene in the movie which caused a furor of computer activity that connected with such base human nature helped me understand it. At my current age I would not be a willing participant, but a number of years ago would probably have been a different story.

re: 10x Productivity Myths: Where’s the 10x Difference in Compensation?

James Birchall — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 20:28:54 GMT

From a business perspective, productivity is pretty easy to define: profit / people / time

If the 10x programmer is, directly and individually, adding to the bottom line then it's easy to compensate them for their work. Contractors and many software entrepreneurs get paid this way. Most programmers, however, don't work alone and aren't competent enough at the other parts of the profit equation (logistics, sales, marketing, accounting, etc...) to make a go of it.

If you work in an area where you can see the contribution (like sales), productivity is easy to measure and compensate (commission). In a support area (like Logistics or Accounting) or a team area (like R&D), it's harder to see what's due to individual effects vs. collective effects (like the documentation + coder pairing described above). In the latter case, you compensate the whole team with a share of the profit (profit sharing) so that people are encouraged to work together rather then at odds with each other. Many software companies do this, though there's probably room for more individual reward (royalties from successful projects for instance).

As for measuring team productivity, they've got a metric in Hockey (yes, I'm Canadian) known as the plus/minus which measures the number of goals scored on the opposing team when the player is on the ice minus the goals scored on the player's own team during the same time period. It's not unheard of for a star player to have a negative indicator for the team. It's surprisingly accurate at capturing the mythical multipliers that affect team performance vs. individual performance.

Hope this helps.

re: 10x Productivity Myths: Where’s the 10x Difference in Compensation?

Martin — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 23:06:48 GMT

A sweet article.

But more emphasis should be put on the word 'quality' instead of productivity. You do not define productivity, but what a average coder imagines under productivity is plain number of lines written. Writing more difficult parts of systems, taking part in technical and architecture desicions instead of just copy pasting and writing well thought before code and proper testing is something very different. Also communication skills, and I do not mean those as being patient with customer, but inter developer communication is even harder to measure as a value as it is also about making other guys' lifes easier and enhancing productivity of your hole team or even the company, not just yourself.

I believe a good developer may often be recognized by solely him being able to think in these terms.

re: 10x Productivity Myths: Where’s the 10x Difference in Compensation?

human mathematics — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 15:29:36 GMT

I agree with all the myths you pointed out. But - isn't $125k enough for any person to live on? If they're going to be lazy on measuring productivity and pay you only the minimum to retain you, you can retaliate by getting the bare minimum done to not get fired in as quick a time as possible, and then heading off to the golf course.