On 16/12/2011 07:05 PM, Bardur Arantsson wrote:
Michael Litchard wrote:
[--snip--]
If getting hit by a bus is a significant factor in the overall outcome of the project then I think those are pretty good odds, aren't they?
(I do realize that traffic accidents are a lot more frequent than we like to think, but still...)
The /actual/ probability of being hit by a bus is irrelevant. The only thing of concequence is the /percieved/ probability. This latter quantity is not related to the former in any meaningful way. In fact, due to an effect known as availability bias, the probability of any potential threat varies depending on how long you spend thinking about it. (In other words, if you've never even considered what would happen if your sole developer got hit by a bus, your estimate of the probability of this will be very low. If you sit down and think about how much trouble you'd be in if this actually happened, suddenly your estimate of the probability starts increasing. This is completely illogical - which is why it's called a cognitive bias.) Ever heard the phrase "fear, uncertainty and doubt"? It's a killer in a business context. It seems clear [to me] that there are actually quite a few Haskell programmers around, and it's not especially hard to find them. The question is how many "good" ones there are. "Good" is all vague and subjective and hard to measure, unfortunately. On the other hand, if you just start the project with more than one developer on board in the first place, then the possibility of just one of them being killed prematurely becomes drastically less serious. (For the business. I'm sure it's still fairly serious for the person who just DIED...) PS. Kudos to Ketil Malde for the best link I've seen today.