OT: Where does it count?

[Shachar Shemesh]

Hetz Ben Hamo wrote:
>
> My question is simple: When does the "developer" experience starts 
> ticking? (I'm not talking about any specific language here). Do the 
> years of writing those small programs/scripts count as a "developer 
> years"? or does the clock starts ticking when I'm a full time programmer?
>
Partiality of occupation is hardly a factor, but experience is. I don't 
have the link, (I think it was on slashdot a while back), but someone 
once claimed that the difference between a programmer with greatness 
potential and actual great programmers is X hours of experience (I don't 
remember what X was, but it translated to about 3 or 5 years of full 
time job experience). The article claimed that the same X applies to 
other areas too (the article used the Beatles as a primary example).

My point is that in order to realize your potential in any field, you 
need to invest a huge amount of time practicing it. This is almost 
impossible to do unless you make it your full time occupation. From 
personal experience, I think the article's quoted X may even be a little 
on the low side.

So, if you did mostly system tasks, but did about 10% development, you 
will see how, for practical reasons, that leaves very little of your 
actual development experience.

I should point out that the article talks about greatness. Assuming you 
have the potential to become a great programmer, this is a requirement 
for becoming great actually happening. Personally, I pride myself on 
seeing programmers, in certain cases total novices, and saying to myself 
"he has the potential". They are not great programmers, but you can see 
that with enough experience, they will be. That said, even those that do 
not possess the potential for "greatness" advance significantly with 
experience. At a guesstimate, about 60% of the population can become 
acceptable quality programmers given enough experience (of course, 
initially they will suck) and a supporting environment ("supporting" 
includes not accepting mediocre). Of course, most of those will quit, 
because programming is a horrid job to do if you don't like it, but this 
is just to point you as to why

Shachar

-- 
Shachar Shemesh
Lingnu Open Source Consulting Ltd.
http://www.lingnu.com

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