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Coding Horror

programming and human factors - Jeff Atwood

Are You Creating Micromanagement Zombies?January 5

Do you manage other programmers, in any capacity? Then take Kathy Sierra's quiz:

1. Do you pride yourself on being "on top of" the projects or your direct reports? Do you have a solid grasp of the details of every project?
   
   
2. Do you believe that you could perform most of the tasks of your direct reports, and potentially do a better job?
   
   
3. Do you pride yourself on frequent communication with your employees? Does that communication include asking them for detailed status reports and updates?
   
   
4. Do you believe that being a manager means that you have more knowledge and skills than your employees, and thus are better equipped to make decisions?
   
   
5. Do you believe that you care about things (quality, deadlines, etc.) more than your employees?

A "yes" to any of these -- even a half-hearted "maybe" -- means you might be creating Micromanagement Zombies.

That's right, Zombies. Mindless automatons who can barely do anything except exactly what they are ordered to do, and even then, only when someone is strictly monitoring what they

Finishing The GameJanuary 1

In yesterday's post, I asked this question:

Let's say, hypothetically speaking, you met someone who told you they had two children, and one of them is a girl.

What are the odds that person has a boy and a girl?

Most people answer 50%.

Unfortunately, this isn't correct.

This problem, although seemingly simple, is hard to understand. For cognitive reasons that are not fully understood, while our intuitions regarding a priori possibilities are fairly good, we are easily misled when we try to use probability to quantify our knowledge. This is a fancypants way of saying there were almost a thousand comments on that post, with not a lot of agreement to be found.

The key thing to bear in mind here is that we have been given additional information. If we don't use that information, we arrive at 50% -- the odds of a girl or boy being born to any given pregnant woman. That's true insofar as it goes, but it's the answer to a different, much simpler question, and certainly not the answer to the question we asked.

Our question contains additional information:

1. The person has two children.
2. One of those children is a girl.

We can use that information to come up with a better, more correct answer. We know this person has two children. What are all possible com

The Problem of the Unfinished GameDecember 31 2008

Today's post is a simple question.

Let's say, hypothetically speaking, you met someone who told you they had two children, and one of them is a girl. What are the odds that person has a boy and a girl?

Consider your answer carefully, without doing a web search, or reading the comments to this post. Don't cheat -- but be prepared to explain your reasoning, because the solution might surprise you.

It's almost like some kind of conspiracy or something.

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Programming: Love It or Leave ItDecember 29 2008

In a recent Joel on Software forum post Thinking of Leaving the Industry, one programmer wonders if software development is the right career choice in the face of broad economic uncertainty:

After reading the disgruntled posts here from long time programmers and hearing so much about ageism and outsourcing, I'm thinking of leaving the industry. What is a good industry to get into where your programming skills would put you at an advantage?

Joel Spolsky responded:

Although the tech industry is not immune, programming jobs are not really being impacted. Yes, there are fewer openings, but there are still openings (see my job board for evidence). I still haven't met a great programmer who doesn't have a job. I still can't fill all the openings at my company.

Our pay is great. There's no other career except Wall Street that regularly pays kids $75,000 right out of school, and where so many people make six figures salaries for long careers with just a bachelors degree. There's no other career where you come to work every day and get to invent, design, and engineer the way the future will work.

Despite the occasional idiot bosses and workplaces that forbid you from putting up Dilbert cartoons on your cubicle walls, there's no other industry where workers are treated so well. Jesus you're spoiled, people. Do you

My Software Is Being PiratedDecember 27 2008

If you're at all familiar with computer history, you might have heard of Bill Gates' famous 1976 letter to the Homebrew Computer Club. The letter was written to address rampant piracy of Bill's earliest product, Altair BASIC, which was being passed around quite freely by hobbyists in paper tape form, without any sort of payment to Microsoft (or, as it was then called, Micro-Soft).

Bill was understandably upset about this state of affairs.

It's an interesting figure: less than 10% of the "users" had actually purchased a copy; the other 90% had pirated it. Let's compare that statistic with a blog comment left November 12th by one of the authors of the critically acclaimed indie game World