[darkstarsys]

Clearly they were missing Amanda, the engineer who's had to review others' terrible code (and her own) for 20 years, and has learned the hard way to keep it simple. She knows she's writing code mostly for people to read, not computers. Give me a small team of Amandas any day.

[jadbox]

Mort, Elvis, Einstein, Amanda does seem to fit well with my experience. While people are a mix, generally I think its fair that there is a primary focus/mode that fits on career goals.

- Mort wants to climb the business ladder.

- Elvis wants earned social status.

- Einstein wants legacy with unique contributions.

- Amanda just wants group cohesion and minimizing future unpredictability.

[lukeschlather]

I don't really like the axes Mort/Elvis/Einstein are on, they all seem like obviously pathological examples.

I think if I were to make three strawmen like this I would instead talk about them as maximizing utility, maintainability, and effectiveness. Utility because the "most business value" option doesn't always make the software more useful to people. (And I will tend to prioritize making the software better over making it better for the business.) Maintainability because the thing that solves the use case today might cause serious issues that makes the code not fit for purpose some time in the future. Effectiveness because the basket of if statements might be perfect in terms of solving the business problem as stated, but it might be dramatically slower or subtly incorrect relative to some other algorithm.

Mort is described as someone who prioritizes present business value with no regard to maintainability or usefulness.

Elvis is described as someone who prioritizes shiny things, he's totally a pejorative.

Einstein is described as someone who just wants fancy algorithms with no regard for maintainability or fitness to the task at hand. Unlike Elvis I think this one has some value, but I think it's a bit more interesting to talk about someone who is looking at the business value and putting in the extra effort to make the perfectly correct/performant/maintainable solution for the use case, rather than going with the easiest thing that works. It's still possible to overdo, but I think it makes the archetype more useful to steelman the perspective. Amanda sounds a bit more like this, but I think she might work better without the other three but with some better archetypes.

[RaftPeople]

> - Mort wants to climb the business ladder.

I think the personas have some validity but I don't agree with the primary focus/mode.

For example, I tend to be a mort because what gets me up in the morning is solving problems for the enterprise and seeing that system in action and providing benefit. Bigger and more complex problems are more fun to solve than simpler ones.

[germandiago]

I vote for Amanda. Really, there is no substitute for seeing something easy to understand.

I have been most of my career working with C++. You all may know C++ can be as complex as you want and even more clever.

Unless I really need it, and this is very few times, I always ask myself: will this code be easy to understand for others? And I avoid the clever way.

[darkstarsys]

And as a manager/CTO, the way to do this is to give the devs time to think about what they're doing, and reward implementation clarity (though it's its own reward for Amandas).

[flappyeagle]

The way to do this is to chew people out when they let their own sources get in the way of doing a good job

[1123581321]

Amanda is just the light side of Mort, Elvis or Einstein, since keeping things simple and reviewable can mean staying business-oriented, using the right technology or using an existing tool with deep knowledge.

We would all like our coworkers to never make bad decisions. :)

[makeitdouble]

What difference do you see from a Mort ?

If there is no inherent complexity, a Mort will come up with the simplest solution. If it's a complex problem needing trade-offs the Mort will come up with the fastest and most business centric solution.

Or would you see that Amanda refactoring a whole system to keep it simple above all whatever the deadlines and stakes ?

[gherkinnn]

Mort is happy with an if soup. Amanda sees what the if soup ought to do and replaces it with a simple state machine and fixes two bugs along the way.

[socalgal2]

Mort: Someone who lacks sense of life, looks dumbfounded, and has only a limited ability to learn and understand. (urban slang)

Elvis: A famous rock star

Enstein: A famous physicist

Amanda: ???

Mort, Elvis, Enstein are referencing things I've heard of before. What is Amanda referencing? is there some famous person named Amanda? Is it slang I'm unaware of?

[noisy_boy]

She is not familiar because she is referencing things that are rare. You haven't seen an "Amanda" because she is rare. Just like common sense.

[layer8]

Amanda is clearly the most beloved of those four. ;)

[dudeinjapan]

Amanda try to be like.

[latexr]

> Amanda

Am I missing a reference? If not, may I suggest “Ada”?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace

Or even better, “Grace”. Seems to fit your description better.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYqF6-h9Cvg

[rawgabbit]

They were also missing Steve Jobs. Having had the displeasure to work with Microsoft tools and code for most of my career. Microsoft never in my experience just plain works. I had to fight Microsoft every step of the way to get things to "work". And when it does it invariably breaks in the next major software release.

[SJC_Hacker]

Microsoft is/was far more developer friendly than Apple

MFC may have been a steaming pile of doodoo, but at least the tools for developing on the OS were generally free and had decent documentation

[AllegedAlec]

You clearly missed the entire message of the entire "three kinds of developers" sort of shit if you think that a fourth type that's perfect is what's missing from it.