Python for air traffic control?

[Aahz Maruch]

In article <slrn9k605n.esf.jajvirta at sirppi.helsinki.fi>,
Jarno J Virtanen <jajvirta at cc.helsinki.fi> wrote:
>Wed, 4 Jul 2001 11:37:25 +0200 Alex Martelli wrote:
>>
>> My impression is that most development shops
>> underestimate the importance of keeping their best programmers and
>> attracting other super-performers -- because it's not acknowledged
>> yet that the individual performance variation between the best
>> programmer in the best environment, and a mediocre programmer in
>> a mediocre environment, is MANY orders of magnitude (easily a
>> factor of 1,000 -- look at those *hundreds of times performance
>> ratios* above-quoted for best-Python vs worst-C...!!!).  Once this
>> little fact does start to be realized, we may move into a kind of
>> "superstar economy" for developers, as is currently in force in
>> sports, show-business, CEO's, traders, and some professions (lawyers,
>> doctors), where top performers earn _disproportionately_ more than
>> mediocre counterparts -- which will have its own problems (and how!),
>> but very different ones from today's relative "flattening" (where a
>> performance that's 1,000 times better is only rewarded 10 or 20
>> times better, if that).
>
>[not that you didn't know this already ..]
>
>Isn't this just what Frederick Brooks claimed in "The Mythical
>Man-Month"? 
>
>quoting from the anniversary edition:
>
>a) Adding people to a software project increases the total effort
>   necessary in three ways: the work and disruption of repartitioning
>   itself, training the new people, and added intercommunication.
>
>   ("hence" Brooks's Law: Adding manpower to a late software project 
>     makes it later.)
>
>b) Very good professional programmers are ten times as productive as
>   poor ones, at same training and two-year experience level. 
>   (Sackman, Grant and Erickson)
>
>therefore:
>
>   A small sharp team is best -- as few minds as possible.

Sure.  You snipped Alex's main point, though, which is that we now have
more real data to *prove* this assertion.
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

"I'm not tense, i'm just terribly, terribly alert"  --unknown