How Developers Stop Learning: Rise of the Expert Beginner

2018-06-17

Erik Dietrich

2017-09-30

Beyond the Dead Sea: When Good Software Groups Go Bad

Bruce Webster’s “Dead Sea Effect” post, which describes a trend whereby the most talented developers tend to be the most marketable and thus the ones most likely to leave for greener pastures when things go a little sour. On the other hand, the least talented developers are more likely to stay put since they’ll have a hard time convincing other companies to hire them.

In 1980, a couple of brothers with the last name Dreyfus proposed a model of skill acquisition that has gone on to have a fair bit of influence on discussions about learning, process, and practice. Later they would go on to publish a book based on this paper and, in that book, they would refine the model a bit to its current form, as shown on wikipedia. The model lists five phases of skill acquisition: Novice, Advanced Beginner, Competent, Proficient and Expert.

If you’ve ever heard the aphorism about “ten years of experience or the same year of experience ten times,” the Expert Beginner is the epitome of the latter.

It’s during the full lifetime of a project that a developer gains experience writing code, source controlling it, modifying it, testing it, and living with previous design and architectural decisions during maintenance phases. With everything I’ve just described, a developer is lucky to have a first try of less than six months, which means that, after five years in the industry, maybe they have ten cracks at application development.