Good programmer / bad programmer

[NotAllThere]

Does anyone have any pith quotes about the cost of a good programmer as opposed to that of a bad programmer? Especially one from a person or organisation of standing.

I know that there was research carried out in the 70s or possibly 80s, that showed a good programmer was some 20x more cost effective that an average programmer; and 50x more cost effective than a poor programmer. But I can't remember who did the research, which weakens the argument somewhat. Also, I remember reading somewhere that it costs one unit to fix in development, 10 to fix in test and 100 to fix in production. Again - anyone know the source?

And yez - I am googling to try to find the sources.

[minestrone]

Steve McConnell said 10*...


Programmer Productivity: The “Tenfinity Factor”

[sasguru]

Fred Brooks in "The Mythical Man Month", if I remember correctly from my software engineering days - don't know what the productivity ratio was he mentioned.

[LatteLiberal]

A quote I read from Steve Jobs, he quoted a 25x increase in productivity in A programmers vs lesser mortals.

[NotAllThere]

Perfect. You are a flippin' genius.

[NotAllThere]

A quote I read from Steve Jobs, he quoted a 25x increase in productivity in A programmers vs lesser mortals.

Darn. I negged you a while back, and now I can't + rep you....

[d000hg]

Fred Brooks in "The Mythical Man Month", if I remember correctly from my software engineering days - don't know what the productivity ratio was he mentioned.

A great book.

Joel Spolsky definitely talks about this too but I can't find which article.

edit: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/HighNotes.html
Not the one I was thinking of but related.

[teclo]

I like this quote from old Billy Gates:

“A great lathe operator commands several times the wage of an average lathe operator, but a great writer of software code is worth 10,000 times the price of an average software writer.” –Bill Gates

[OwlHoot]

I like this quote from old Billy Gates:

“A great lathe operator commands several times the wage of an average lathe operator, but a great writer of software code is worth 10,000 times the price of an average software writer.” –Bill Gates

Shame Microsoft doesn't seem to employ any of them

[SupremeSpod]

Shame Microsoft doesn't seem to employ any of them

“If you think you're a really good programmer… read (Knuth's) Art of Computer Programming… You should definitely send me a résumé if you can read the whole thing."