There's also a tendency to measure programmer productivity by how many contributions the programmer can make to a project.Under certain version control systems these are called "commits". They list out a set of changes that the programmer wishes to make to the code. In an era of social coding sites like Github and Gitlab we can easily review what other programmers are committing. Since we can measure the number of commits, we can use this measurement to feel that we're not generating the same number and frequency of commits as other programmers. And unlike measurements of old (lines of code in particular, which measures how many lines of code a programmer adds to a program) we can review the quality of their commits to a project. It can be daunting to see a lot of quality work done by our peers. It can also be source of frustration and feelings of inadequacy. "Why can't I be as productive or contribute as this other person?" we ask ourselves.
-Even more frustrating is when others use these metrics to judge productivity and code contributions. We we may find ourselves being criticized for our output (or lack thereof).
+Even more frustrating is when others use these metrics to judge productivity and code contributions. We may find ourselves being criticized for our output (or lack thereof).
Commits and lines of code are the most visible measurement of coding productivity, but they don't show much about the actual practice of programming. We can't measure the amount of time thinking about the problem just by looking at a commit. We don't see the mounds of reference material the programmer used in order to figure out a solution, and we certainly don't know if this commit is the result of one afternoon of work or many days of work (unless they commit more often). We might even find out that this person is acting as the focal point of an organization and is folding the work of multiple folks into their commits.
projects / themediocreprogrammer.git / blobdiff