You measure productivity that way on the assembly line or other menial tasks where it's obvious how to do things and the work isn't very complicated. Trying to do this with creative professions is a disastrous mistake.
>> So much of development is bullshit posturing for developers to justify their existence
That applies to any profession. Developers aren't unique in this regard.
> You measure productivity that way on the assembly line or other menial tasks where it's obvious how to do things
Isn't it obvious how to do things in programming? Many developers, in my corporate experience, occupy themselves with how to do things in code. That is exceedingly unfortunate. How to write code should be an obvious disqualifier before obtaining employment. Nobody would hire a lawyer, for instance, who didn't know how to a legal argument.
Writing code should be as obvious as writing an essay, but I suspect many developers that are hiring probably have trouble writing essays as well.
Anyways, if you had the choice between a 10 minute pizza and a 3 day pizza with ingredients more evenly spaced apart which would you choose?
>> Isn't it obvious how to do things in programming?
Not in my field, no. But I might be an oddity. I get hired to do the kinds of things others have tried and failed to do. So while they may be "productive" by whatever arbitrary metric (solving small problems real quick), they fail at gnarly, "deep" shit which can't be done in a day, or, sometimes, in a week, but which does need to be done.
That is why the software gods invented test automation.
> paying interest on it is
That is why simplicity is important, because less is more. All code is ultimately debt as it demands some amount of maintenance. When there is less to maintain there is ultimately less debt.
> And you will hardly hire a lawyer to work in unknown to him legal domain in foreign country in foreigh language.
Has that ever happened to you as a software developer? The one time I was told to learn a new language I was allowed the time and space to learn it.
>> So much of development is bullshit posturing for developers to justify their existence
That applies to any profession. Developers aren't unique in this regard.