The obstacles of developer productivity talks about the application programmer's productivity from 4 different aspects: 1. Premature optimization 2. Software complexity 3. Uncertainty 4. Culture issues Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucZsaQ2Evtw&list=PLEhSHDVBMPO39WMeZPiUBQSNFQ_3x7hba&index=18

1. The Obstacles
of
Developer Productivity
Laurence Chen
blog: replware.medium.com
website: replware.dev
CEO@REPLWARE

2. Agenda
● Definition of productivity
● Premature optimization
● Software complexity
● Uncertainty
● Culture issues
● Conclusions

3. Definition of productivity
● Productivity = results / time
● What is the result of the corporate?
○ revenue
○ image
○ customer satisfaction
○ market share
○ time to market
○ etc.

4. Premature optimization
● Complex Arch
● Complex types
● 100% test coverage
● Design patterns
● Fancy libraries

5. How to escape from premature
optimization?
● Don’t ask yourself
○ Should I use XXX? (XXX is a solution: complex type,
complex Arch, etc.)
● Ask yourself:
○ As to achieve OOO, what possible solutions can I take?
(OOO is certain property that you want in your software.)
○ Is OOO really needed? Do I need it now?

6. Paul Graham is wrong about the
language productivty
● Beating the averages
○ Line number is the most important factor in programming
language productivity.
○ macro: code which write code.
○ Lisp is great because of macro.

7. Mutable States vs Clojure
● Clojure is designed to handle
states well.
● Mutable states and control structures
>> line numbers
● The developer productivty
comparison
○ Clojure: Java ~= 5: 1

8. Big O analysis - algorithm complexity

9. Software complexity
● How to understand a software?
○ Informal reasoning
○ Testing

10. The problem of modeling mutable
states (identity)

11. How to cope with mutable states?
● Functional programming
○ A good programming langauge
○ Using immutable collection by leveraging library support
● reboot your process

12. The way we work
● Managers ask developers to estimate software
development time, and then chases the deadline.
● Manage people, but seldom manage the uncertainty.

13. The management of uncertainty
● Are there any rabbit holes?
● Is the work properly shaped up?
● When to give up?
● How to present the progress?
● Take a look at ShapeUp

14. Culture issues
● Academic elitism - reward competition in
classroom.
● Whiteboard - reward solving puzzles, not
problems.
● Optimization of resume - reward chasing
solutions, not results.

15. Feedback system
● Do we have the feedback system rewarding
developer productivity?
● A bad system will beat a good person every
time. - Edward Deming

16. Culture Change and Change
Management
● Culture is the set of beliefs which governs
behavior.
● Change the belief by
○ Removing “cognitive dissonance” --- saying one thing and
doing another
○ Example and avatar
○ Getting help from an outsider (For example, a consultant)

17. In conclusions
● Developer productivity depends on
environment.
● There are 4 obvious productivity obstacles.
○ Premature optimization
○ Mutable states
○ No management of uncertainty
○ Wrong feedback system in our culture
● My solutions are in blue colors.

18. Final words
● To developer: Focus on your problem instead
of chasing solutions.
● To manager: Manage results, not tasks nor
inputs.

19. Reference
● Managing for results - Peter Drucker
● Radical Simplicity in Technology
(https://www.radicalsimpli.city/) - Stephan Schmidt
● Beating the averages - Paul Graham
● Out of the Tar Pit
(http://curtclifton.net/papers/MoseleyMarks06a.pdf) -
Ben Moseley, Peter Marks
● Shape Up (https://basecamp.com/shapeup/webbook) -
Ryan Singer
● Process Consulting - Alan Weiss