Programmers who are 10 times as productive as normal, do they still exist? And if they do, is that really useful?

1. 10x Programmers: Myth or Real?
Ashraf Alam
Principal Engineer, Schroders

2. Agenda:
* Understanding 10x Programmers
* Defining the ‘x’
* 10x Programmer Then
* 10x Engineer Now
* 10x Programmers: Deeper Drive
* ‘Fear’ Factor: The Biggest Barrier

3. Defining the ‘x’
 Number of LoC?
 Number of Features?

4. Defining the ‘x’
 10x Programmer Then
 Simpler Problem
 Simpler System
 Less Security Risk
 10x Engineer Now
 Complex Requirements
 More Scalability Requirements
 More Security Concerns

5. 10x Programmers: Deeper Drive
1. They Make the Best Usage of Tooling
 Editors
 Utilities & Online Services
 Own Tools

6. 10x Programmers:
Deeper Drive
1. They Make the Best
Usage of Tooling

7. 10x Programmers: Deeper Drive
2. They Don’t Reinvent the Wheel
(Unless It’s Really Needed)
 Software industry, by far became much matured in last 3 decades. Almost
every problem that developers are trying to solve by coding has been solved
and available as API’s (either as binary, or web service), some of which are
commercial, while others are free.
 Besides, open source frameworks also provide a great flexibility to understand
underlying api behaviour or customization as needed by the users.
 Before jumping into programming, 10x engineers actually make sure this
problem has not been solved fully (or partially) before or, if so, they are not
available to be used.

8. 2. They Don’t
Reinvent the Wheel
(Unless It’s Really
Needed)

9. 10x Programmers: Deeper Drive
3. They (Continuously) Write Beautifully
Engineered Code
 Writing great software requires defining good architecture, that not only
follows good design patterns and principles, but also takes advantage of
modern computer, infrastructures.
 Producing good engineered code, not only enables writing new functionalities
faster, but also reduces bug significantly.

10. 10x Programmers: Deeper Drive
DRY Principle: Don’t Repeat Yourself
 Usage of tools to identify code issues:
 Code Coverage, Code Duplicate, Debugging
 Visual Studio, Resharper, Remote Debugging

11. 10x Programmers: Deeper Drive
3. They (Continuously) Write Beautifully
Engineered Code
They write DRY code….

12. 10x Programmers: Deeper Drive
DRY Principle: Don’t Repeat Yourself
 Master of all patterns and principles
 Identify sandwich code
 Being DRY with delegate, virtual methods
 Usage of tools to identify code issues:
 Code Coverage, Code Duplicate, Debugging
 Visual Studio, Resharper

13. 10x Programmers: Deeper Drive
3. They (Continuously) Write Beautifully
Engineered Code
 But …
 Beautiful engineering requires continuous improvement.

14. ‘Fear’ Factor: The Biggest Barrier
 One of the main reasons behind this awful situation, I found is, “fear”.
 Organizations, specially enterprise entities, mostly fear about changes.
 The most pathetic part, in this case, is, even a 10x engineer can't do much on
a project that is poorly written and the project is constrained not to use
appropriate tools, api's or engineering as needed.
 Software development is incredibly fast changing discipline, in terms of
tooling, frameworks and engineering and requires continuous change to be in
right place.

15. Thank You
Keep in Touch
 mohammadashrafulalam
 ashraful.alam