[AUUG-Talk]: Good examples of highly-productive coders...

[steve jenkin]

Would you be able to help me with putting together a list of "highly
productive programmers"?

Off the top of my head:
    Ken Thompson
    Rob Pike
    Tridge
    Linus

That I can't reel off more is my ignorance ;-)

I don't know how to come up with a good metric for 'productivity' - it
isn't just Lines of Code :-)
[i.e. measuring programmer 'output' automatically is an unsolved & maybe
unsolvable problem]

You'll notice I didn't include RMS on the list.
I've been reflecting on GNU & RMS [especially his bagging of Linus
recently over "Open" vs "Free"]
and realised there is a huge gap between the public perception of RMS &
his "legendary" coding powers and the reality.

Thompson & Linus both created new kernels from scratch in around 12 months.
RMS has been going on Hurd for approaching 20 years... [really!]

This first started when I found that Windows "Longhorn" took ~3 years
for a team of *10,000* (yes!) to fail.
My guesstimate of "Plan 9" was ~25 man-yrs:
2 years [1989-90] and maybe 10 people, but I haven't found any good
history of the project

The 'Gold Standard' output of this line of thinking would be a table of
LOC output of some of the truly great programmers
[or maybe, 'years to complete kernel-equivalent']. But I don't know if
that'll be possible.

I'd love to be able to demonstrate RMS and GNU don't live up to their hype.

cheers
s

-- 
Steve Jenkin, Info Tech, Systems and Design Specialist.
0412 786 915 (+61 412 786 915)
PO Box 48, Kippax ACT 2615, AUSTRALIA

sjenkin at canb.auug.org.au http://members.tip.net.au/~sjenkin