Hacker News Reader

Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

The author blows his own argument out of the water when he says:

> I would venture to say that really good programmers are about 10 to 20 times as effective as just average ones.

Aren't those the super ones? Or at least on that track?

But disregarding that, I'd personally say the super programmers are the ones capable of inventing git, or bitcoin. I don't care what you say, 99.9% of programmers simply couldn't do that. Saying super programmers don't exist is like saying Einstein's theory of general relativity is decomposable into easy parts.

Sorry, I don't think so.

View on HN

It is, though. Einstein wrote an entire book explaining the theory of general relativity to people who didn't even understand the math:

http://www.amazon.com/Relativity-Special-General-Theory-Vol/...

Most ideas can be broken down into simpler parts. For instance, multiplication used to be a university level subject, but most literate people can do multiplication up to any digit (given the time, of course).

You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.

Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

Just because you understand something deeply and possess the pedagogical skills to explain it to an elderly layperson doesn't mean it's suddenly easy after you've explained it, and doesn't mean it was easy to put in the hard work required get to that level of understanding. Breaking something complicated down and explaining it to a layperson is a different thing than actually doing the work yourself.

Are you suggesting that if one is able to explain a complicated problem to their grandmother, somehow the original problem was actually easy, or is made easy by this explanation? I haven't read Einstein's book on relativity linked in your sibling comment, but I don't think the existence of this book makes relativity an easy thing to have worked on.

I agree, someone who is 10-20 times more effective is a big deal. Imagine if we had pilots who could fly you to your destination 10-20 times faster; farmers who could produce 10-20 times more food; or civil engineers who could build skyscrapers 10-20 times taller.

There aren't many fields where a 10-20x improvement is feasible.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com