My developers are smarter than your developers!

Over on his blog John Montgomery shares how some of Microsoft’s internal research puts the lie to the old canard that VB programmers aren’t as smart as other programmers. A short quote:

If you ask VB developers how much education they have, about the same have college degrees as C/C++ developers (we ask what their primary language is and cross reference by level of education attained), and only negligibly more C/C++ developers have graduate degrees. More than that, more pro developers who primarily use VB say they have an undergrad CS degree than pro developers who use C/C++ primarily (though more C/C++ primary devs say they have an engineering degree). In other words, C/C++ pro devs are more likely to have an engineering degree than VB devs (it’s outside the margin of error, but just barely).

Longer entry is here.

3 thoughts on “My developers are smarter than your developers!

  1. Erik

    You do realize you are equating computer smarts with formal education? I doubt the reliability of this measure. Ten years in IT at a large business have only reinforced my doubts.

    Reply
  2. paulvick

    Erik: I totally agree – a piece of paper on the wall doesn’t necessarily guarantee anything. After all, our fearless leader here at MSFT doesn’t have a college degree… 🙂

    It was more one of those "useless factoids" that nonetheless indicates the fallacy of a stereotype.

    Reply
  3. Jim Brown

    I am of the strong opinion that regardless the programming language, the best programmers out there are the ones who have the moxy to really finish a piece of work. After all, there are lots of programmers who will spend the effort to get the job about 80% right. Whatever the tool we use, whoever gets the job done 98%-99% right (if there is such a thing) is the REAL guru to the end user.

    Reply

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