Is the "Brain fast" programmer better?

Transferred from: http://www.iteye.com/news/30801

An article in Hacker News today, "why people who think slowly can win", has aroused extensive discussion.

"Before I hired a TopCoder champion, I expected him to code fast, but in fact he was the most careful and meticulous person, but we were gradually discovering that in two years, the code he submitted was never a bug and never was," said Burson, a netizen who commented on the article. ”

Why does it seem that people who think slowly can win?

The authors saythe so-called reaction is slower than the response needs more self-discipline. In contrast, the reaction is faster and less accurate, while slow thinking is like a turtle, slow but steady。

Everyone remembers the story of the Turtle-Hare race, but no one seems to learn the lesson of "slow success".

We usually think that a fast-reacting person means being smart and working hard, and slow-witted people mean laziness, apathy, or even stupidity. And when we talk about doing something to slow down, it means relaxing, not doing it more efficiently.

That is not the case. Channe Frederick, a professor at the Yale School of Management, says that doing homework can reflect the nature of slow thinking, that is, step-by-step reasoning to solve problems. Frederick's most famous study was the creation of "cognitive reflection testing"-a measure of whether a person is "quick to solve a problem after a short period of thinking" or "make a decision after a lengthy reflex arc deliberation”。 This is his Test question:

There are three questions:
1. A racket and ball cost $1.10. The racket costs $1.00 more than the ball. How many dollars does the ball ask?  
2. If five machines produce five parts in five minutes, how long does it take for 100 machines to produce 100 parts?  
3. There is a water lily in a lake, and every day, the area of the water lily will be enlarged by one fold. If this water lily needs 48 days to cover the whole lake, how many days does it take to cover half of the lake?

Frederick said respondents generally gave the following intuitive but incorrect answers: 10 cents, 100 minutes, 24 days. The correct answer to the first question, however, is 5 cents. The correct answer to the second question is 5 minutes. The correct answer to the third question is 47 days.

The reason why people find it tricky to solve these simple problems is that these three questions lure human intuition with specific wrong answers. Of the 3,428 respondents surveyed, three were 33%, and 33% had answered at least one of the wrong questions. At all universities, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology students have the highest percentage of answers to all questions, but only 48%.

Frederick often shared this test with everyone in his speech, and most people would still give an intuitive but wrong answer. The test, he said, would shake the confidence of the subjects and make them less likely to trust their intuition, so it might take them longer to look at things.

Scott Burson also mentioned in his comments that the speed of thinking depends, of course, on the specific situation. Different projects, different situations require different types of programmers, and sometimes you have to take the risks you need to act quickly and break the stereotypes.

Nonetheless, most people agree that developers should shift from being as fast as possible to coding carefully and meticulously.

Original link: https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2015/07/25/the-power-slow-thinking/ToZbzYl7rG0yVMCtsZ7WnJ/story.html

Is the "Brain fast" programmer better?