How smart are programmers?

Alex E

Are programmers really as smart as they claim? Does programming require high intellectual abilities? What is IQ of an average programmer? IMHO, programming doesn't require much math and science skills except for mathematical modeling. Intellectual abilities required for coding are lower than those required for such fields as engineering, science and medicine. What do you think?

brianwelsch

Umm. I don't understand the question.;) BW {insert witty/thought-provoking saying here}

Chris Losinger

Alex E. wrote: What do you think? all of the things you mention require different skill sets. an engineer is not a scientist and a doctor (by which i assume you mean medical doctor) is not a scientist. an engineer applies what scientists discover and a doctor applies what medical researchers discover. i'm sure you can find examples where the lines get blurry - but the fact is that there are groups of people who work in laboratories figuring things out and there are groups people working in design shops figuring out how to make money from those discoveries. we call the first set "scientists" and the second set "engineers". they're all doing different things, and so are programmers. IMO, programmers these days are more like craftsmen. we use high-tech tools, but in very non-rigorous and undisciplined ways (compared to traditional engineers). however, i do think it's easier for a dummy to get into professional programming than into professional medicine, simply because programming doesn't require the 8 years of hard training that medical doctors get. but, that doesn't mean he'll be able to stay. $0.02 -c

Greenspun's Tenth Rule of Programming: "Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad-hoc, informally-specified bug-ridden slow implementation of half of Common Lisp."

tonyschr

Who is more 'intelligent': Michelangelo or Richard Feynman? I think it's all relative. People have different skills and abilities, and the luckiest ones are able to get paid to use those abilities. Similarly, in any field as broad as "programming" or engineering, the range of skills will be so enormous that attempting to compare the averages is meaningless. Until recently the pay, prestige, and volume of interesting work was enough that I think the field has attracted a many of the brightest people in the world into our field, especially if you include researchers. However, we've also attracted a lot of dopes, which would bring down the averages. That said, developing a successful sophisticated software product is enormously hard, and anybody who says otherwise is either an idiot or lying. Donald Knuth, someone who I think everybody agrees is intelligent and has top notch mathematical skills, said in a recent interview, "...In fact, my main conclusion after spending ten years of my life working on the TeX project is that software is hard. It’s harder than anything else I’ve ever had to do."

Paul Oss

Alex E. wrote: IMHO, programming doesn't require much math and science skills except for mathematical modeling. Intellectual abilities required for coding are lower than those required for such fields as engineering, science and medicine. First off, no one's as smart as they claim. And the more they claim, often the less smart they are. However... Programming, software engineering is only as difficult as the task being engineered. Basically, there are different types of programmers. A programmer writing software to control, say, real time telemetry information for military aircraft? Pretty smart folks. But then one could argue that it's not the programming, but the knowledge of real time telemetry that's the real meat and potatoes of the process. For instance, I'd love to move into 3d game programming. Unfortunately, I lack the hard core math, Euclidean geometry etc. to probably do it. I've spent the most of my career writing business apps. I'd estimate that about 90% of what I do isn't even close to rocket science. But once in a while, a problem is posed which requires real engineering talent. And that's where the men are seperated from the boys (so to speak). As the lead programmer, the other programmers usually defer to me when these situations come up. Personally, I consider myself to be in the top half of programmers. But I'm reluctant to 'claim' what part of that half I'm in. In my experience, I've come to realize one thing: There's ALWAYS someone smarter than you are. I don't have any real hard experience doing the serious low-level, kernel level, machine level stuff. I consider those guys to be near the top. Bottom line, there are different levels of programmers. It doesn't require any serious iq and engineering talent to flip data pages for a user writing Access or SQL scripts- or even VB (although I think there are some very good VB programmers). But, say, to write search engine algorithms for google.com- that usually requires some serious iq and education. Usually on a PhD level. Paul

mystro_AKA_kokie

By programmers, if you mean just someone who writes code, then it doesn't require much inteligence. If all the algorithms for a complicated problem are handed out to you as a specification, then a programmer is more like a construction worker. Howerver if you are reponsible for both research and solution development, then you definitly have to be smart. How smart depends on how difficult the problem.

Mr Morden

Well, it was a programmer who scored the top marks in the Australian national IQ test. Having said that, IQ tests don't really give a good example of how smart someone is. I've just spent a week and a half interviewing folks with some very impressive resumes. The ones who did the best were the ones who actively spent time improving their skills. The ones who scored lowest, and knew the least, were the ones who didn't bother reading, or trying new stuff, or looking things up on the net. I personally don't consider myself to be a guru, or great programmer. I do think that I'm pretty good at what I do. Perhaps somewhat above average. I also think that I could be better. When I stop thinking that way, I'm doomed. Cheers The universe is driven by the complex interaction between three ingredients: matter, energy, and enlightened self-interest.

Mike Nordell

Alex E. wrote: Are programmers really as smart as they claim? It's like asking "Should all people with drivers licenses really be allowed to drive a car?". The answer is obviously a loud: No. However, if a good software developer (to make a distinction for a "programmer" which is also the definition of a "code monkey") claims something, one can usually count on the correctness of their statement. You would of course youself have to have the insights and experience to judge if a developer is "a good software developer" or not. Does programming require high intellectual abilities? Considering that VB exists, and every bloody "boss" tries to create their own freaking time-management software and pushing it down us poor developers throats, I can with great confidence answer: No! Definitely not! :-) What is IQ of an average programmer? What's the IQ of an average person? For a software developer though, I'd say it's probably "general population" + 'n', since the higher IQ the more probable I believe it is a person enjoys complex problems. Someone really dumb probably can't even understand such problems, much less solve them.

Joe Woodbury

The best programmers I know are very smart. As you get down to mediocre level, they can get pretty damn dumb. While programming doesn't require science per se, those programmers who really understand the scientific method (hypothesize/test/etc.) and who understand that programming is a discipline not unlike architecture, write better software. Finally, with one possible exception, the best programmers I know are also very creative people, more right-brained then left. But that really isn't a function of "raw" intelligence.

ColinDavies

Gosh, there are some great answers already. All I can say is that over time I have seen the average programmer's intelligence lowered. It use to be that guys who found Math and Physics simple, got into programming because it was challenging and actually paid quite well. Now I see people entering programming who don't even have fundamental math skills. Also looking through crud code in business apps shows me this is, so true. Regardz Colin J Davies

Sonork ID 100.9197:Colin

You are the intrepid one, always willing to leap into the fray! A serious character flaw, I might add, but entertaining. Said by Roger Wright about me.

David Wulff

Programmers need very high intellectual abilities or else they would not be able to participate in Lounge discussions and thus would not be *real* programmers... :rolleyes:

David Wulff http://www.davidwulff.co.uk

I'm not schizophrenic, are we.

peterchen

Math skills are not about adding things together and juggling operators around. This is Math knowledge. Math skills are a certain mindset, how you percept, analyze, and tackle certain problems. The same for other sciences (scientific or not). Especially the foundation sciences (math, physics) mindset is very close to the coder/developer mindset. Of course you can be a code monkey, getting your spec, crunching out code. But that's not about it. The ability to think out of the box, but inside the rules plays a big part here IMO. Having aid that, 90% of coding are boring repetetive tasks. it's the 10% that challenge you to the max.

One day I might find it quite amusing how touching tongues make life so confusing Anne Clark again [sighist]

Alex E

I'm asking because I'm observing the following trend - programming becomes less complex. 40 years ago programmers were top mathematicians. 20 years ago - pretty good engineers. During last 10 years, with invention of VB and similar programming environments, every ill-educated moron became able to develop software. BS is no longer required for majority of jobs. Everyone with high school diploma can go study in one of those "technical schools" for a year and be called "programmer". I thought for a while what does it mean for a job to be complicated and came up with the following definition. Job complexity is the proportion of population unable to master the job. Since everyone can pick up a trash, complexity of janitor job is close to 0. Conversely, only few can do research in theoretical physics, thus complexity of this job is close to 1. Accountant would probably be around 0.5. Physician - 0.9. What is complexity of programming according to this definition?

Alex E

Colin^Davies wrote: All I can say is that over time I have seen the average programmer's intelligence lowered. That's exactly what I'm talking about. See my post below.

peterchen

Alex E. wrote: Everyone with high school diploma can go study in one of those "technical schools" for a year and be called "programmer" Everyone can juggle some HTML together and call himself a "Web programmer". 40 years ago, many programmers were top mathematicians, because the expensive computing time was used mostly solving tough math problems (cracking codes etc.) 20 years ago, people started tackling lesser problems, because an the cost/cycle rapidly dropped. 10 years ago, the cost/cycle dropped so low, it was economically sane to file your tax papers on a PC. The questions is where you place "programmers". there's a vast field between code monkeys, coding project managers, software designers, software developers - this field will probably rake between 0.6 and 0.9, and you didn#t include like Stroustrup and Knuth yet. [pc filter off] For the 0.6: just think how many women deem themselfes able to do the job. [/pc filter off]

One day I might find it quite amusing how touching tongues make life so confusing Anne Clark again [sighist]

Olli

Alex E. wrote: with invention of VB and similar programming environments, every ill-educated moron became able to develop software. But VB :confused: isn't a language, it is kind of defective condition.... X|

Olli Make it idiot proof and someone will make a better idiot......
:suss: :rolleyes: :suss:

Pavel Klocek

Programmers (or developers rather) surely need some IQ, depending on the character of the job. There are more kinds of "IQ" - mathematical, analytical, team work ability, "social IQ". Different combination of them is optimal for different jobs. Pavel Sonork 100.15206

ColinDavies

Alex E. wrote: That's exactly what I'm talking about. See my post below. Yes we are in agreement. I'm surprised how many English speaking programmers don't understand what an algorithm is anymore. So many programmers are just users of the development tools and have no ability for real creativity. Regardz Colin J Davies

Sonork ID 100.9197:Colin

You are the intrepid one, always willing to leap into the fray! A serious character flaw, I might add, but entertaining. Said by Roger Wright about me.

Christian Graus

I don't think that being a *good* programmer has changed much, although you're right that what a moron can achieve in terms of getting bad software to look good enough to go to market increases every year. Christian Hey, at least Logo had, at it's inception, a mechanical turtle. VB has always lacked even that... - Shog9 04-09-2002 Cats, and most other animals apart from mad cows can write fully functional vb code. - Simon Walton - 6-Aug-2002

Andrew Torrance

My IQ has gone down since I have been programming. The reason is that the IQ questions themselves seem to put a premium on being able to see an assumed link between various bits of data . Programming on the other hand teaches you never to assume anything and to test each assumption before you rely on it . Its not that you do not see the links , but you also see the myriad of other possibilities . Its got to the stage that I even have long conversations with myself while I am driving trying to think of how many possibilities there are when you toss a coin . Heads , tails , can't see , lost the coin , coin never came down , coin landed on edge , coin got destroyed by tossing , can't be arsed to check etc etc all real world possibilities that are ignored by simple maths and people who write IQ questions. Oh no, you can't fool me. There ain't no Sanity Clause!