Posted by
CowboyNeal
on from the diary-of-a-madman dept.
bsadler writes "There is a pretty interesting article on the psychology of a programmer over at devx. It includes some suggestions that a manager might take into account when dealing with programmers. Maybe my boss will finally give me my own office."
Re:It's not really psychology
by
Orthanc_duo
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
I think the big point is that programming is an art. Every programmer I know knows this on som elevel but lay people generally do not. I'm lucky in that my boss is a programmer
Re:It's not really psychology
by
SpaceLifeForm
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
It's not that simple. Just treating them like
people is part of the problem. Most people
can deal with interruptions because they don't
stay on the same train of thought for very long.
Non-programmer types when they interrupt a
programmer *never* for a second believe they
are really causing a problem. But, IMNSHO,
those interruptions are real thought-killers.
I'd like to LART some managers who come by
every 10 or 15 minutes while I'm working on
a project with a very tight deadline, and ask
'Is it done yet?'
-- You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Re:It's not really psychology
by
DuctTape
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
I'd like to LART some managers who come by every 10 or 15 minutes while I'm working on a project with a very tight deadline, and ask 'Is it done yet?'
Reminds me of one time I was a project manager "under the gun" for a past-due project deadline, and my manager and his boss and various other PHBs would come around at nondeterministic intervals to ask what the status was (essentially it was done as soon as the developers had a V-8 moment), so as an experiment, and a total waste of time on my part but the developers understood what was going on and that I was being a very effective filter between them and the PHBs, I would continuously round-robin visit the developers getting continuous status updates, and at the end of each cycle, I would pop my head into the PHBs' offices and let them know what was going on. This kept me from getting interrupted at random moments, and the guys kinda figured out when to expect me, and could give one-syllable grunts to convey status with minimal context switch.
I think my approval rating went up that period. Of course, I never did it again.
Perhaps we need an article about the psychology of PHBs. Or project managers. Still can't believe I did it....
DT
-- Is this thing on? Hello?
Re:It's not really psychology
by
Bald+Wookie
·
· Score: 5, Funny
So then I have to focus on whatever interrupted me, while trying desperately to cling on to those ideas that didn't make it down to the keyboard before I was interrupted.
Sounds like you need to disable write caching.
Please forward to our foreign compatriots...
by
rand.srand()
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Well intentioned, but the reality is programmers are being wholesale replaced with foriegn labor. Businesses, especially non-IT ones, want nothing to programming or hiring programmers. Much less cater to them in any way above other employees.
A shower?? There's a guy in the Republic of Elbonia who's willing to work out of his hovel on a old 386 for $4 a day programming. He doesn't demand breaks, and there's no coffee machine to stock. And he's viewed as a nearly identical resource. Now is not the time to demand high priced add-ons. But... if we could just get the people of Elbonia to buy into this and equalize the market...
...her?
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Why do people insist on using 'her' instead of 'his' for the generic pronoun? It isn't 'sensitive', it's illiterate. Using female pronouns is even somewhat insensitive: it implies women need to be compensated for, and gratuitously inserts a gender issue into one's writing.
As a 'Brit' I too find this very odd. Consider this small chunk of text:
When creative people work on making something new, they often enter a mental state where things just flow. This is a highly desirable state, both for the programmer herself and for the organization that profits by her labors.
If written by someone from the UK (and probably AU or NZ) this would be written like this:
When creative people work on making something new, they often enter a mental state where things just flow. This is a highly desirable state, both for the programmer themself and for the organisation that profits by their labors.
No use of gender, and perfectly correct English too.
-- Blaming GW Bush for the Iraq war is like blaming Ronald McDonald for the poor quality of food.
Why do people insist on using 'her' instead of 'his' for the generic pronoun?
Because they're writing about me.
I guess a male author planning this kind of article would prefer to imagine the situation involving female (in this case programmers) rather than males, unless they're gay or something.
Why do you think the shower was so important to the computer researcher mentioned in the article?
I felt like I just visited a shrink
by
wordisms
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I've got to say that article was quite the ego booster.
First, programming is most definitely an art as it is a blending of layout, design, creativity, and tasteful hacking to derive a solution.
The section about programmer's concentration was interesting, and I definitely fall into that category. It is nothing for me to sit down to go through the process of designing, coding, debugging, and repeat for 8 hours, without realize it at all. It only speaks of my passion for my work, and my enjoyment in solving challenging problems.
Poster here who have noted about treating programmers more like people than equipment hit the nail right on the head. In my school, our proffessors warn us to avoid jobs that look as though the employers treat programmers as "code monkeys" (if you sat enough monkeys at computers typing C, how long would it take until you get MS Office?). At some of my best internships, and the job I have gone back full-time to, my section leader encourages his team to take regular breaks (which often involve heading back to an ongoing game of RISK), schedules frequent offsites/classes/excursions to get us out of the cubicles, and overall creates one of the healthiest work environments I've ever been in.
All that said, I shouldn't be to programmer biased. Not all programmers are great programmers who have mastered that mystical "flow". I could see a manager reading this article, trying all these things, and getting really burnt.
It's all a game of balance that definitely begins with treating employees like people, not equipment.
Psuedoscience
by
wizzums
·
· Score: 5, Informative
A programmer's ability to focus on a single task for long periods to the exclusion of all else has led some people to comment on similar behavior in autistics (Asperger's Disorder), and to wonder whether most programmers are mildly autistic. I would be surprised if most programmers were autistic--our concentration is too easily broken.
I particularly like how this fellow uses Autism as a reason, then clarifies it by noting a single branch of the entire syndrome as if that's what it's *really* called, and finishes up his great assumption by explaining that autistics must have high concentration levels.
While they're in the same psychological realm, he's trying to refer to ADD.. not Autism.
From ADD.org "You get one idea and you have to act on it, and then, what do you know, but you've got another idea before you've finished up with the first one, and so you go for that one, but of course a third idea intercepts the second, and you just have to follow that one, and pretty soon people are calling you disorganized and impulsive and all sorts of impolite words that miss the point completely."
Autism on the other hand is the complete inability to concentrate on ANY task for short periods of time. Autism is associated with Stims, self stimulatory behaviour. Asperger's Syndrome is a "mild" form of Autism that tends to affect mostly boys. Note that there is still a lack of common sense associated with this. Simply being quirky is not Asperger's.
A child with ADD is more than likely able to understand you when you tell him to "sit still, eat your dinner," while a child with Autism might just flick his fork around continuously while he's eating.
Credibility: I work with Autistic children, and ironically, have been diagnosed with ADD.
I've no idea how this happened, but somewhere along the line we let ourselves be talked into the idea that creativity is present in artists, musicians, and architects, but not programmers, box packers, or soccer players. Creativity is a basic human ability.
Computers can't paint. They can't write computer programs either. It's not some crude mechanistic process that we can automate ; there is a need for style and creativity. Which to me, makes it an art.
(Surely painting and music are 'explicitly constructed by man', and each of these have distinct rules that allow one to do it well too?)
Software bees
by
UncleSocks
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Whenever I read useful articles such as this, I'm reminded of Orson Scott Card's "How software companies die":
Software - How Software Companies Die
By: Orson Scott Card
The environment that nutures creative programmers kills management
and marketing types - and vice versa. Programming is the Great Game.
It consumes you, body and soul. When you're caught up in it, nothing
else matters. When you emerge into daylight, you might well discover
that you're a hundred pounds overweight, your underwear is older than
the average first grader, and judging from the number of pizza boxes
lying around, it must be spring already. But you don't care, because
your program runs, and the code is fast and clever and tight. You won.
You're aware that some people think you're a nerd. So what? They're
not players. They've never jousted with Windows or gone hand to hand
with DOS. To them C++ is a decent grade, almost a B - not a language.
They barely exist. Like soldiers or artists, you don't care about the
opinions of civilians. You're building something intricate and fine.
They'll never understand it.
BEEKEEPING
Here's the secret that every successful software company is based on:
You can domesticate programmers the way beekeepers tame bees. You
can't exactly communicate with them, but you can get them to swarm in
one place and when they're not looking, you can carry off the honey.
You keep these bees from stinging by paying them money. More money
than they know what to do with. But that's less than you might think.
You see, all these programmers keep hearing their parents' voices in
their heads saying "When are you going to join the real world?" All
you have to pay them is enough money that they can answer (also in
their heads) "Geez, Dad, I'm making more than you." On average, this
is cheap. And you get them to stay in the hive by giving them other
coders to swarm with. The only person whose praise matters is another
programmer. Less-talented programmers will idolize them; evenly
matched ones will challenge and goad one another; and if you want to
get a good swarm, you make sure that you have at least one certified
genius coder that they can all look up to, even if he glances at other
people's code only long enough to sneer at it. He's a Player, thinks
the junior programmer. He looked at my code. That is enough. If a
software company provides such a hive, the coders will give up sleep,
love, health, and clean laundry, while the company keeps the bulk of
the money.
OUT OF CONTROL
Here's the problem that ends up killing company after company. All
successful software companies had, as their dominant personality, a
leader who nurtured programmers. But no company can keep such a leader
forever. Either he cashes out, or he brings in management types who end
up driving him out, or he changes and becomes a management type himself.
One way or another, marketers get control. But...control of what?
Instead of finding assembly lines of productive workers, they quickly
discover that their product is produced by utterly unpredictable,
uncooperative, disobedient, and worst of all, unattractive people who
resist all attempts at management. Put them on a time clock, dress
them in suits, and they become sullen and start sabotaging the product.
Worst of all, you can sense that they are making fun of you with every
word they say.
SMOKED OUT
The shock is greater for the coder, though. He suddenly finds that
alien creatures control his life. Meetings, Schedules, Reports. And
now someone demands that he PLAN all his programming and then stick to
the plan, never improving, never tweaking, and never, never touching
some other team's code. The lousy young programmer who once worshiped
him is now his tyrannical boss, a position he got because he played
golf with some sphincter in a suit. The hive has been ruined. The best
coders leave. And the marketers, comfortable now because they're
surrounded by power neckties and they have things under control, are
baffled that each new iteration of their software loses market share
as the code bloats and the bugs proliferate. Got to get some better
packaging. Yeah, that's it.
Slashdot Mirror
There is no psychology really involved... Just treat the programmers as the professionals they are. Treat them like people.
Cover your eyes and click this link!
Well intentioned, but the reality is programmers are being wholesale replaced with foriegn labor. Businesses, especially non-IT ones, want nothing to programming or hiring programmers. Much less cater to them in any way above other employees.
A shower?? There's a guy in the Republic of Elbonia who's willing to work out of his hovel on a old 386 for $4 a day programming. He doesn't demand breaks, and there's no coffee machine to stock. And he's viewed as a nearly identical resource. Now is not the time to demand high priced add-ons. But... if we could just get the people of Elbonia to buy into this and equalize the market...
Why do people insist on using 'her' instead of 'his' for the generic pronoun? It isn't 'sensitive', it's illiterate. Using female pronouns is even somewhat insensitive: it implies women need to be compensated for, and gratuitously inserts a gender issue into one's writing.
I've got to say that article was quite the ego booster.
First, programming is most definitely an art as it is a blending of layout, design, creativity, and tasteful hacking to derive a solution.
The section about programmer's concentration was interesting, and I definitely fall into that category. It is nothing for me to sit down to go through the process of designing, coding, debugging, and repeat for 8 hours, without realize it at all. It only speaks of my passion for my work, and my enjoyment in solving challenging problems.
Poster here who have noted about treating programmers more like people than equipment hit the nail right on the head. In my school, our proffessors warn us to avoid jobs that look as though the employers treat programmers as "code monkeys" (if you sat enough monkeys at computers typing C, how long would it take until you get MS Office?). At some of my best internships, and the job I have gone back full-time to, my section leader encourages his team to take regular breaks (which often involve heading back to an ongoing game of RISK), schedules frequent offsites/classes/excursions to get us out of the cubicles, and overall creates one of the healthiest work environments I've ever been in.
All that said, I shouldn't be to programmer biased. Not all programmers are great programmers who have mastered that mystical "flow". I could see a manager reading this article, trying all these things, and getting really burnt.
It's all a game of balance that definitely begins with treating employees like people, not equipment.
I particularly like how this fellow uses Autism as a reason, then clarifies it by noting a single branch of the entire syndrome as if that's what it's *really* called, and finishes up his great assumption by explaining that autistics must have high concentration levels.
While they're in the same psychological realm, he's trying to refer to ADD.. not Autism.
From ADD.org
"You get one idea and you have to act on it, and then, what do you know, but you've got another idea before you've finished up with the first one, and so you go for that one, but of course a third idea intercepts the second, and you just have to follow that one, and pretty soon people are calling you disorganized and impulsive and all sorts of impolite words that miss the point completely."
Autism on the other hand is the complete inability to concentrate on ANY task for short periods of time. Autism is associated with Stims, self stimulatory behaviour. Asperger's Syndrome is a "mild" form of Autism that tends to affect mostly boys. Note that there is still a lack of common sense associated with this. Simply being quirky is not Asperger's.
A child with ADD is more than likely able to understand you when you tell him to "sit still, eat your dinner," while a child with Autism might just flick his fork around continuously while he's eating.
Credibility: I work with Autistic children, and ironically, have been diagnosed with ADD.
I've no idea how this happened, but somewhere along the line we let ourselves be talked into the idea that creativity is present in artists, musicians, and architects, but not programmers, box packers, or soccer players. Creativity is a basic human ability.
Computers can't paint. They can't write computer programs either. It's not some crude mechanistic process that we can automate ; there is a need for style and creativity. Which to me, makes it an art.
(Surely painting and music are 'explicitly constructed by man', and each of these have distinct rules that allow one to do it well too?)
Software - How Software Companies Die
By: Orson Scott Card
The environment that nutures creative programmers kills management and marketing types - and vice versa. Programming is the Great Game. It consumes you, body and soul. When you're caught up in it, nothing else matters. When you emerge into daylight, you might well discover that you're a hundred pounds overweight, your underwear is older than the average first grader, and judging from the number of pizza boxes lying around, it must be spring already. But you don't care, because your program runs, and the code is fast and clever and tight. You won. You're aware that some people think you're a nerd. So what? They're not players. They've never jousted with Windows or gone hand to hand with DOS. To them C++ is a decent grade, almost a B - not a language. They barely exist. Like soldiers or artists, you don't care about the opinions of civilians. You're building something intricate and fine. They'll never understand it.
BEEKEEPING
Here's the secret that every successful software company is based on: You can domesticate programmers the way beekeepers tame bees. You can't exactly communicate with them, but you can get them to swarm in one place and when they're not looking, you can carry off the honey. You keep these bees from stinging by paying them money. More money than they know what to do with. But that's less than you might think. You see, all these programmers keep hearing their parents' voices in their heads saying "When are you going to join the real world?" All you have to pay them is enough money that they can answer (also in their heads) "Geez, Dad, I'm making more than you." On average, this is cheap. And you get them to stay in the hive by giving them other coders to swarm with. The only person whose praise matters is another programmer. Less-talented programmers will idolize them; evenly matched ones will challenge and goad one another; and if you want to get a good swarm, you make sure that you have at least one certified genius coder that they can all look up to, even if he glances at other people's code only long enough to sneer at it. He's a Player, thinks the junior programmer. He looked at my code. That is enough. If a software company provides such a hive, the coders will give up sleep, love, health, and clean laundry, while the company keeps the bulk of the money.
OUT OF CONTROL
Here's the problem that ends up killing company after company. All successful software companies had, as their dominant personality, a leader who nurtured programmers. But no company can keep such a leader forever. Either he cashes out, or he brings in management types who end up driving him out, or he changes and becomes a management type himself. One way or another, marketers get control. But...control of what? Instead of finding assembly lines of productive workers, they quickly discover that their product is produced by utterly unpredictable, uncooperative, disobedient, and worst of all, unattractive people who resist all attempts at management. Put them on a time clock, dress them in suits, and they become sullen and start sabotaging the product. Worst of all, you can sense that they are making fun of you with every word they say.
SMOKED OUT
The shock is greater for the coder, though. He suddenly finds that alien creatures control his life. Meetings, Schedules, Reports. And now someone demands that he PLAN all his programming and then stick to the plan, never improving, never tweaking, and never, never touching some other team's code. The lousy young programmer who once worshiped him is now his tyrannical boss, a position he got because he played golf with some sphincter in a suit. The hive has been ruined. The best coders leave. And the marketers, comfortable now because they're surrounded by power neckties and they have things under control, are baffled that each new iteration of their software loses market share as the code bloats and the bugs proliferate. Got to get some better packaging. Yeah, that's it.