Learning new skills initially lowers your productivity
For the last 5 months I’ve been working on a project that has necessitated my learning a lot of new technologies (Symfony, NFS, working with MySql from the command line, etc). As such, I’ve often felt like I was running through thick mud. The fast pace of the projects I’ve worked on during the last few years has been replaced by the slow pace of constant learning. This is great, in some ways. All of us need to acquire new skills, if we are to move forward with the perfection of our skills. However, the experience has left me sympathetic to list of warnings:
Frequently Forgotten Fundamental Facts about Software Engineering
Tools and techniques
T1. Most software tool and technique improvements account for about a 5- to 30-percent increase in productivity and quality. But at one time or another, most of these improvements have been claimed by someone to have “order of magnitude” (factor of 10) benefits. Hype is the plague on the house of software.
T2. Learning a new tool or technique actually lowers programmer productivity and product quality initially. You achieve the eventual benefit only after overcoming this learning curve.
T3. Therefore, adopting new tools and techniques is worthwhile, but only if you (a) realistically view their value and (b) use patience in measuring their benefits.
December 12th, 2008 at 2:37 am
[...] Vote Learning new skills initially lowers your productivity [...]
May 18th, 2009 at 10:22 am
Great writing and suggestions. Thank you!