Dragon vs. Hydra - Competing Development Styles

peterofoz writes "You may recall that we discussed a company which was recruiting talent with a puzzle last December. This turned out to be n-Brain releasing a new product that allows multiple editors to modify the same code in real time to support the collaborative programming paradigm. Now they're back with another challenge: 'Are two heads really better than one? N-BRAIN, Inc. intends to definitively answer this question by sponsoring the Hydra Versus Dragon Coding Competition, a Reality TV-style battle between the world's finest software developers.' Mark June 23rd on your calendars." While n-Brain clearly intends this to promote their software, it will be interesting to see if the competition results support their theory of collaborative development.

Comments

SubEthaEdit

[Caste11an]

I've used SubEthaEdit for years for this purpose.

That's good for RealityTV, but..

[Cyberax]

That's good for RealityTV but in real world I wouldn't want to work on a software where I have to struggle with other people editing the same file code at the same time.

In 99% of situations you should just modularize your code to minimize conflicts, not try to make them 'nicer'.

Dragon for the Win

[antirelic]

Even though Dragons and Hydra's have roughly the same hit dice, lets face it, Dragons have a much lower AC and can deal and take alot more damage. Plus the fact that they can fly...

Wait... I'm gonna go read the summary quick...

Now there's an idea!

[consonant]

A coding reality show on TV! Watch the dragon takeon the hydra! Damn, that would make some compelling television. I'd even accept it on pay-per-view!

"Watch seasoned developers and greenhorn programming prodigies square off their skills against each other! The algorithms will clash and the development environments will see sparks fly!"

I'd say the second episode of this series would be a vi vs emacs thing..

p.s: and vi would win ;)

Developers suffer from interruptions

[Anonymous Coward]

Developers are most productive when they are in the groove. Distractions kill productivity. Collaboration causes distractions, ergo collaboration decreases productivity. http://www.byte-vision.com/ProductivityArticle.aspx

"The Mythical Man Month" points out that adding people to a project often/usually slows it down. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month

The best development model I can think of is Linux. Everyone works on their own thing and submits it when it is ready.

Re:Developers suffer from interruptions

[turbidostato]

""The Mythical Man Month" points out that adding people to a project often/usually slows it down."

Does "stupidly stupid" exists? I'd say that's what you earned with such a claim.

As a previous answer to you post already stated, that would mean that the fastest project would be that with *no* resources at all asigned.

What the Mythical Man Month points out is that adding people to *an already delayed project* will usually delay it even more (due to the need to bring to speed the new resource). Quite a different thing.

And then there's the third theory:

[Antique Geekmeister]

Theo de Raadt.

I want to compete

[Ilan Volow]

Simply for the hot groupies who will obviously throw their bodies at me when I win.