List of 30 European Tech Visas and Work Permits - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wLPGB2BdRxHWbdOXXtKAoCQimY_4RjBjRH8Grv3U0tI/edit#gid=0 <comment><USER2> American in Paris for 1 year working as a Senior DevSecOps Engineer (or whatever they want to call us). Went from 225kUSD/yr in usa to 95kEUR in Europe (most senior devs are lucky to get 75k, paris tech salaries are lagging behind London, AMS and Berlin. I felt like I was getting underpaid until I figured out (awkwardly at a dinner) that i make more than a lot of doctors and government ministers. Plus the healthcare, subsidized transit, subsidized lunches 20 days a month and TRUE vacation means I'm never going back to the states.

All that being said, I'm bouncing to Berlin for a higher salary and a roughly 30 percent drop in cost of living compared to Paris.

Check out jobbatical.com

Amsterdam is a hot scene, Berlin is hot and affordable, dont come to Paris unless you really speak French and or have deep Fintech/banking tech background.

<comment><USER3> I get paid 250K EUR in Geneva for writing deadbeat Scala code for Banks. I doubt anyone can match that in Europe

I am straight out of ETH Zurich so my experience is negligible.

<comment><USER4> Switzerland is an outlier in many aspects for Western Europe :)

And not only in terms of earning - look for example at benefits you get for having kids (amount of parental leave, cost of kindergarten, etc).

It's like a weird capitalist Enklave in the middle of Europe. I'll bet a lot of people thought of having kids in Germany or Austria and moving to Switzerland after a few years of taking advantage of generous benefits for having young kids in the former.

<comment><USER5> What is also common is to live at the border in one of those or France/Italy and cross the border every day. That way you take advantage of the higher wages and lower living expenses respectively.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Left the states a few years ago. After a 2 years stint in Toronto at a startup I now work for a Swedish development agency in Gothenburg.

6 weeks of paid vacation, great public transit, and affordable housing all mean I'm never going back to the states. If your considering moving to Europe, I'd highly recommend it. Salary isn't everything in life.

Happy to answer any questions

<comment><USER7> What's so bad about Toronto? Ontario looks like a nice region to live.

<comment><USER8> I don't think anything is bad with Toronto per say (maybe housing prices), he explicitly said states, maybe life just pulled him to the EU

<comment><USER6> Pretty much this but there are some gripes I have with Toronto as I posted above

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For some reason the UK Tech Nation visa isn't filled in. Proper name is Tier 1 (Exceptional Talent). Tech Nation are the 'designated competent body' for the tech specialistaion - it's a generic visa for specialists who've been endorsed by a body in the UK from their industry. It cost something like £600 all up for the actual fees, then they sting you with an NHS surcharge which is now £400 a year I think - another gift to immigrants from Mrs May. They only give about 400-odd of them a year.

I've got the visa, I feel like the requirements for this visa should mention that putting together the application process was a shitload of work because it goes to a panel of industry people to be assesed, so is much, much harder to get than a lot of the other ones which are more criteria based. Really, if you want it, you need to convince the panelists that you'll add value to UK tech somehow, beyond just being an employee.

Also, don't be like this guy if you don't get it...[https://www.technation.sucks/](https://www.technation.sucks/)

<comment><USER10> > _Tech Nation, the Giant Ape, has no sign of intelligence and is there to > destroy beautiful things that go beyond her comprehension ability._

Man, somebody's got an axe to grind...

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have a Danish startup visa and happy to answer questions.

One thing re funding I wish I understood before I moved here: Europe has no favoured state laws which prevent governments from unilaterally propping up local companies, startups are no exception. However, there is a "no one cares" de minimus limit of 200k euros. Any published funding accompanying a startup visa will come out of this amount, and in practice there are many other schemes to receive money up until the 200k limit. Beyond that you start applying for European wide funding schemes. I'd choose your destination on other factors, since all state money is subject to the same limit.

<comment><USER12> I'm moving to Denmark in a month. A few questions, if you have time:

\- Do you have an opinion on the Copenhagen tech scene? Companies, talent, access to funding etc.

\- How've you found integrating with the Danish culture?

\- Any suggestions for how to build your network there?

<comment><USER13> I have another question to add to this list (part of your question #2 actually): how is dating in Europe for an American?

<comment><USER14> As a Dane, I'd say no problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's strange when I think about it that I could tell you quite a bit about the US immigration and visa system (and I've never even used it apart from a J-1 years ago) but I have absolutely no idea how my own country the UK does immigration and visas.

<comment><AUTHOR> Surprisingly, the UK is not that bad.

<comment><USER16> Why is that surprising? The UK has had huge immigration numbers for decades and a centrist/centre-right government that is (mildly) interested in simplifying government procedures.

<comment><USER17> Because reducing the number of immigrants has been a hot topic politically for over the past decade.

<comment><USER18> I think in most of Western Europe "limit immigration" is just the politically correct code for "stop immigration of Muslims and other people from non- Western nations". Skilled workers from Western nations are usually welcomed with open arms.

<comment><USER19> In England at least, there seems to be a significant "EU immigrants took our jobs" factor as well. As I understand it, that perception was a significant factor in the Brexit vote.

For example see: [https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/may/20/reality- che...](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/may/20/reality-check-are-eu- migrants-really-taking-british-jobs)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Another avenue to consider is that Ireland allows citizenship by registration for anyone with a grandparent born in Ireland. It's a pretty easy process if you qualify, and isn't a visa, you are immediately recognized.

There are some gotchas. The US doesn't acknowledge dual citizenship, and I believe you must travel in/out of the US with a US passport. If you have a US security clearance or wish to obtain one, you will have a problem as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Both Italy and Spain have the same regime. It can take a year or two to set everything up, but you get citizenship and a passport (not a temp visa)

<comment><USER21> Italy at least is much more lenient, allowing you to go back as many generations as you like to prove Italian ancestry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Missing from the Dutch Highly Skilled Visa is that there is also an income requirement based on age. I don't recall the exact numbers but if you are 35+ the income requirement is significantly higher. In any case, the required level would not be a problem for most tech workers.

<comment><USER23> It's important to note that if you qualify for The Dutch Highly Skilled Visa you will typically also qualify for the great "30% rule" tax exception, this means that you get 30% of your income tax-free for 5 years, and the other 70% will fall mostly in the lowest tax bracket. (Ostensibly to help you move, but in practice really to make The Netherlands more competitive for highly skilled migrants)

To qualify you need a salary of €54K (lower if you're under 30), which is pretty easy to get in the tech scene so it's not uncommon for startups in Amsterdam to have _all_ their foreign workers making more than their native Dutch colleagues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Another addition suggestion - the Dutch American Friendship Treaty.

If you're a US citizen, you've got ~$7500 in savings, and can employ yourself, you can live and work in the Netherlands.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DAFT](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DAFT)

I emailed this guy a few times and he was always happy to answer questions - [http://shawnindutch.com/](http://shawnindutch.com/)

</comment><comment><USER25> Why is Israel in a European list ?

<comment><USER26> But not Turkey...(?)

<comment><USER27> Probably because the culture is separated, which is not the case with Israel?

<comment><USER28> I worked in a startup in Turkey (Istanbul) years ago (currently working in a startup in Boston). The culture was pretty "Western". The office had a beer fountain and my manager was really chill, it was an enjoyable experience. Not sure if you would be able to find that in any other part of the country though.

<comment><USER27> I heard Turkey has changed a lot in the past 5 years. Do you think it'd be the same today?

<comment><USER28> I don't know sorry. This was ~7 years ago and I lived in the US since then. I would guess it highly depends on the company. The company I worked for was a hardware/iot/web startup that was doing really fascinating work, and got good investment, and founders were graduates of best universities in Turkey. My guess is if you research the company and see that the culture is something you like, it's probably possible to find another company like that. Though I would admit finding a job somewhere else in Europe is probably orders of magnitude safer. I wouldn't do it today, but that's because I have a job I love in the US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The information for Ireland isn't entirely accurate. There's two separate lists for the availability of the Critical Skills Employment permit and the second list requires a minimum annual salary of €60,000[0]:

 _Occupations with a minimum annual remuneration of €30,000 for a restricted number of strategically important occupations contained in the Highly Skilled Eligible Occupations List. A relevant degree qualification or higher is required._

 _All occupations with a minimum annual remuneration of over €60,000, other than those on the Ineligible Categories of Employment for Employment Permits or which are contrary to the public interest._

For Sweden, the employment link referenced is for self-employment. The details around regular, full-time employment can be found on Migrationsverket's site[1].

[0] - [https://dbei.gov.ie/en/What-We-Do/Workplace-and- Skills/Emplo...](https://dbei.gov.ie/en/What-We-Do/Workplace-and- Skills/Employment-Permits/Permit-Types/Critical-Skills-Employment-Permit/)

[1] - [https://www.migrationsverket.se/English/Private- individuals/...](https://www.migrationsverket.se/English/Private- individuals/Working-in-Sweden/Employed/Work-permit-requirements.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixing.

<comment><USER29> Cheers! Just trying to help out.

To quote _Hackers_ [0]: " _We demand free access to data, well, it comes with some responsibility._ "

[0] - [https://youtu.be/Rn2cf_wJ4f4](https://youtu.be/Rn2cf_wJ4f4)

<comment><AUTHOR> Absolutely, I really appreciate it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> May I suggest an addition?

Ireland has a working holiday visa that lets students and recent graduates come live and work for a year with basically no restrictions (no need for work permit, etc.) It's the only EU country I know offering such a fantastic opportunity, at least for US citizens (Canadians, South Koreans, etc. have more options)

[https://www.dfa.ie/travel/visas/working-holiday- visas/](https://www.dfa.ie/travel/visas/working-holiday-visas/)

It's fantastic for someone who probably could get their foot in the door but needs to be physically present in the place to get started. Interviewing from another continent is 100x as hard.

</comment><comment><USER30> Anyone have advice for junior SWEs? I will have a year of co-op experience by the end of 2019, and was thinking of applying from the US to work in Germany or the Netherlands for full-time junior positions.

</comment><comment><USER31> France: Passport talent: multi-year residence card of a foreigner in France

[https://translate.google.fr/translate?hl=fr&sl=auto&tl=en&u=...](https://translate.google.fr/translate?hl=fr&sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.service- public.fr%2Fparticuliers%2Fvosdroits%2FF16922)

[https://www.service- public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F16922](https://www.service- public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F16922)

</comment><comment><USER32> I'm not familiar with the immigration system of too many other countries. But for the UK this is masking a lot of major differences between visas. For instance, the Tier 2 visa requires an employer to sponsor it. The visa is then tied to that job. That employer needs a license, et cetera. Whereas the tech nation visa allows someone to come to the UK without a job and look, and then change jobs easily.

</comment><comment><USER33> I moved from Tunisia to France 4 years ago, feel free to email, I'd be glad to help with any information.

Email is in my profile.

</comment><comment><USER34> You could add Austria to the list: [https://www.migration.gv.at/en/types-of- immigration/permanen...](https://www.migration.gv.at/en/types-of- immigration/permanent-immigration/very-highly-qualified-workers/)

<comment><AUTHOR> done

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> @gonsanchezs, please add Latvia: [https://startuplatvia.eu/startup- visa](https://startuplatvia.eu/startup-visa)

Cost: 100Eur

Family: Yes

Must be board member

Requirements: Not employed at other company or member of another board. Within 6 months 30'000 Eur investment, 18 months another 30'000;

<comment><AUTHOR> done

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I'm in the process of applying for Spanish Highly Skilled visa and the company told me that university diploma is required. I wonder where the author of the document got his info on that visa, to make sure whether it's required or not.

</comment><comment><USER37> Thanks for the list - would love to see which countries are new-grad friendly as well.

<comment><USER38> Netherlands is pretty favorable.

Get an MSc and you'll have full access to the Dutch job market for a whole year, then once you get a job you can get the highly-skilled migrant permit (with less restrictive criteria I think). After five years and passing some "integration" tests you can get permanent residence.

You're disadvantaged in some ways however because you're ineligible for the 30% tax ruling you'd possibly receive if you were recruited from abroad into a highly skilled position.

Then again, once you've started working you can do some tax adjusting and deduct a big chunk of your tuition costs from your first working year's taxes. I'm not sure if this will be possible much longer, though.

<comment><USER39> Graduates can receive 30% ruling...

<comment><USER38> Only PhD graduates, according to the Belastingdienst.

[https://www.belastingdienst.nl/wps/wcm/connect/bldcontenten/...](https://www.belastingdienst.nl/wps/wcm/connect/bldcontenten/belastingdienst/individuals/living_and_working/working_in_another_country_temporarily/you_are_coming_to_work_in_the_netherlands/30_facility_for_incoming_employees/conditions_30_p_facility/conditions_30_percent_facility)

[https://www.belastingdienst.nl/wps/wcm/connect/bldcontenten/...](https://www.belastingdienst.nl/wps/wcm/connect/bldcontenten/belastingdienst/business/payroll_taxes/you_are_not_established_in_the_netherlands_are_you_required_to_withhold_payroll_taxes/when_you_are_going_to_withhold_payroll_taxes/etraterritorial_costs_and_the_30percent- facility/conditions_attached_to_the_30percent- facility/definition_of_expatriate_employee)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I think details on issuance times are needed, some of those can easily be taking half a year or more to get, other are known to routinely miss advertised times (blue card)

<comment><USER41> French tech talent visa (eu blue card) - 1 month for the visa itself. Then 3 months processing for the residency (applied dec got the card in mar).

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> This should include renewability and pathway to permanence and citizenship. UK tech nation has permanence in 5 and citizenship in 6 which is quite compelling

</comment><comment><USER43> FWIW: Some countries like Poland, don't have a special visa, but regular ones are easily available. Reasonable quick (2 months) with low legal cost.

</comment><comment><USER44> Nice, I'd love to see a list similar to this, that includes tax relief as well — similar to The Netherland's 30% ruling.

</comment><comment><USER45> This is amazing. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER46> Which European city has the most SF-like weather? :)

<comment><USER47> If you are looking for cities with a decent tech scene then for SF weather it is probably London and for peninsula and south bay weather maybe Barcelona.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Missing: [http://www.czechstartups.org/en/start-up- visa/](http://www.czechstartups.org/en/start-up-visa/)</comment>


X is business value - <AUTHOR> http://unethicalblogger.com/2011/11/18/x-as-business-value.html

<comment> hello-trolls obvious</comment>


Estonia to implement a digital nomad visa - <AUTHOR> https://estonianworld.com/business/estonia-to-implement-a-digital-nomad-visa/ <comment><USER2> From the news, this does not seem to significantly change traveling to Estonia. Nationalities that need a Schengen visa will still need a Schengen visa, with all the paperwork burden and time spent in queues that that represents. The only difference is that one will be allowed to work remotely while in Schengen (which hitherto has existed in a grey area), and because one might have one's own business or freelance, Estonian consulates will be less demanding that one show proof of steady employment at a local firm in one's country of origin.

<comment><USER3> That sounds like a big deal. As someone who has worked remotely for almost a decade now (US citizens, US businesses), the hardest part is getting government officials onboard with what they consider non traditional work arrangements.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You can't actually use the visa to actually come or go. So at best it's a form of tax avoidance.

</comment><comment><USER5> How long is thr visa?</comment>


SQL Server next version Community Technology Preview 1.1 now available - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/dataplatforminsider/2016/12/16/sql-server-next-version-community-technology-preview-1-1-now-available/ <comment><USER2> Here's the first sentence:

> Microsoft is excited to announce that the next version of SQL Server (SQL > Server v.Next) Community Technology Preview (CTP) 1.1 is now available for > download on both Windows and Linux.

This is a really confusing product name. Is this a preview of version 1.1 of SQL Server? Is this version 1.1 of a community preview of SQL Server v.Next? Does v.Next mean 1.1, or does it mean community technology preview? How many layers of preview are going on here? Once the CTP releases, will we have SQL Server v.Next 1.1 Production? Or will we have SQL Server 1.1 production?

The name implies a dizzying variety of different offerings of SQL Server! I have the same issue with the profusion of products that contain the substring ".Net" \-- which of them is right for me?

Microsoft might finally be playing nice with Linux and trying to entice developers, but as an outsider, this sort of weird enterprise complexity keeps me away.

</comment><comment><USER3> I can't speak to the robustness differences between SQL server and others since I haven't encountered any data loss either way.

But while I love the features of Postgres, I sorely miss having a first party GUI for not only just running queries but all the other important things like scheduling backups, building schemas, and importing data.

Postico is really nice but very simplified.

</comment><comment><USER4> Honest question as I have never worked with MS-SQL: in which use-cases would it be a better fit than PostgreSQL?

<comment><USER5> Not sure if this is a great answer, but many COTS solutions have chosen it as the only DBMS they support for one thing.

Also, purchasing SQL Server does not just get you a DBMS, but several serviceable business intelligence tools. SQL Server integration, analysis and reporting services. Analysis services allows users to look at data in various ways and is integrated with everyday MS tools like Excel so to me that in particular seems like a unique offering.

I do not know about scaling issues and all that, because I deal with a small deployment for an internally used ERP system.

Edit: I would also say I'm stuck in SQL Server 2008 land. The reporting in 2016 looks amazing.</comment></comment>


WHO Director: "Covid-19 does not transmit as efficiently as influenza" - vanilla-almond https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19---3-march-2020 <comment><AUTHOR> This is important, because lots of internet commentators are just going with the most alarming possible statements: 28 day incubation periods, people can get infected twice, airborne transmission, asymptomatic transmission. These assertions are _all_ based on outlier cases, sometimes even _single_ cases, observed during the fog of war. Even if these accounts are correct, they aren't the typical case, which is what actually matters for policy and prevention.

The typical case has been well-known for months: most people get fevers, the incubation period is usually a few days, and most transmission is from symptomatic cases and via droplets. The WHO has collected stats from tens of thousands of cases and they've been straightforwardly pointing in this direction the entire time.

There definitely is a serious problem, but misinformation helps nobody, even if its spreaders are well-meaning. For example, I've seen a lot of people take the inflated statements ("28 day incubation period!!") to mean that stopping the spread is completely impossible, while we have seen by example that it isn't.

<comment><USER2> Analysis shows there might be two subtypes from the very early days: [https://academic.oup.com/nsr/advance- article/doi/10.1093/nsr...](https://academic.oup.com/nsr/advance- article/doi/10.1093/nsr/nwaa036/5775463)

If the theory is correct, the L type is more aggressive and may be causing explosive outbreaks as in Wuhan, while the S type is less aggressive but harder to block from transmission. Interestingly, the S type is the ancestor. It would be interesting to see what is more prevalent in the outbreaks of South Korea, Italy and Iran.

<comment><USER3> Thank you for providing a primary source! I'm sick and tired of getting regurgitated information from the media (pun intended).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've noticed a trend in the discussion of Covid-19 when talking to people. They tend to either under estimate it; "it's just the flu", or they over estimate it; "This is going to be really bad, time to buy all toilet paper".

There's a lot of confusing mixed messages, not even from just random people, but from the WHO and different governments. They say they are fully prepared and it can be contained yet doctors and health advisors are saying that's just not true. I think there's a bit of play here between the negative effects from the virus, versus the perceived negative effects from panic (I suspect the economy plays a role in government's responses far more than people think).

So to me it seems there is a bit of a management or reaction to an over reaction. Yet, in face of a pandemic, being worried is probably sensible because it will lead you prepare and be conscious of good hygiene practises. Telling people everything is okay in the face of possible emergency or possible disaster is not good.

Are there people out there over reacting and over reaching with their analysis of this? Sure. But that doesn't mean there's nothing worth reacting over. This is a serious health issue, and calling it 'just the flu' could be considered reckless in my opinion.

<comment><USER5> Where do you put Paul Grahams simple analysis that at the current rate within one month we have 1 million cases?

Over estimation?

<comment><USER6> Doubling rate in confirmed cases is closer to 4 days than 3 unless you include only the last week or so. A doubling rate of 6 days in the medium term has also been estimated. This will obviously delay the time to reach one million cases. However, confirmed cases are a lower bound for the total number of cases, as cases only get confirmed when evaluated by healthcare personnel. It is not credible that Iran and Italy have 3000 cases each, when lots of tourists returning from there have been diagnosed. Did they just randomly bump into one of the 3000 in a country of millions?

Uncertainties aside, the model of exponential growth is sound. Disease spread follows exponential growth until it hits an inflection point, either due to running out of viable hosts or due to quarantines and other countermeasures reducing the transmission rate per infected below 1. China forcibly caused this inflection on February 4th, by essentially stopping their economy through strict quarantines.

A doubling rate of 4 days yields 1 million infected globally on the 29th of March, and that's what we'll get unless the transmission rate somehow falls before then. Plenty of assumptions in that statement though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> To me it seems WHO was downplaying it the whole time. First lie is China will be able to contain it and now they don't even call it a pandemic. Also R0 is much higher then for flu.

I really hope the new idea about transmissability is true but if it is I don't get why China treats it as they do. Wuhan is locked for 40+ days.

I can't trust WHO now related to Covid-19, especially after what happened to stock. Of course they have to lie more if that avoids "panic". Truth is underrated in our civilization at the moment.

<comment><USER8> > I can't trust WHO now related to Covid-19, especially after what happened to > stock.

The stock market is an indicator of investor confidence. How investors feel about a particular event is not necessarily accurate, and has basically no direct relation to the WHO.

<comment><USER9> Also, even a perfectly successful way of containing Covid-19 would depress stock values [against a benchmark of _the virus not existing_ ] if it involved containment actions such as isolating significant numbers of people and cancelling events and flights.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It feels like all of the reporting I've seen from experts (not just mainstream news outlets which are admittedly terrible)has indicated Covid-19's R0 is worse than influenza.

It would have been awfully nice if The WHO tossed us a citation on their claim that this is not the case. It was hard to read the entire piece with that unsupported claim hanging so heavily.

And the containment claim...again...would have loved for them to argue the case, because it is exceedingly easy to argue _against_ the case.

<comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately R0 is a bit of a vague thing.

For seasonal flu, you could think of it as being very low, because most people already have immunity. It's already endemic, so there isn't room for exponential growth.

For a _new_ flu (like the 2008 swine flu) it is extremely high, which is why people barely did anything to contain it back then -- it was just impossible.

What we have right now is in between.

<comment><USER11> Isn't R0 by definition for a population that isn't immunitized?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I just want to highlight this quote from the WHO:

 _" With influenza, people who are infected but not yet sick are major drivers of transmission, which does not appear to be the case for COVID-19."_

 _" Evidence from China is that only 1% of reported cases do not have symptoms, and most of those cases develop symptoms within 2 days."_

<comment><USER13> That's good news. Early-onset symptoms (in particular, a fever) was part of what made tackling SARS possible.

<comment><USER12> Another quote from the WHO:

 _" We don't even talk about containment for seasonal flu – it's just not possible. But it is possible for COVID-19. We don't do contact tracing for seasonal flu – but countries should do it for COVID-19, because it will prevent infections and save lives. Containment is possible."_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Keep in mind that almost 20% of the Diamond Princess cruise ship's passengers and crew (700+ of 3711) were infected with the coronavirus. However its infection rate compares with the seasonal flu (which is a much less dangerous illness overall), it clearly has the potential to infect a large number of people in the coming months.

<comment><USER15> Given that there are probably very few places that are worse for a disease outbreak than a cruise ship where everyone eats and drinks all day and touches everything and uses the same toilets I'll actually take the 20% as an encouraging number.

<comment><USER16> Yeah, but as soon as they were aware of a single case on board, everyone single person on the ship was informed, told to stay in their room, and became paranoid about further transmission. I don't know if we'll have similar levels of obedience in the rest of the world.

<comment><USER17> There were reports that the actual procedures on the ship were extremely poor, and the quarantine was half-baked at best.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Please don't trust WHO, obviously they got heavily influence from Chinese government.

Remember when COVID-19 out-broken in China, the WHO told us

"The Committee does not recommend any travel or trade restriction based on the current information available. "

[https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/30-01-2020-statement- on...](https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/30-01-2020-statement-on-the- second-meeting-of-the-international-health-regulations-\(2005\)-emergency- committee-regarding-the-outbreak-of-novel-coronavirus-\(2019-ncov\))

Then we saw China locked down all major city themselves. Now you tell me it's fine not to ban flights from China?

And they also keep mentioning it's not a big deal. Obviously they don't want to hurt Chinese economy. I won't trust anything they say, as their interest is China government's interest, not people's health.

<comment><USER19> Hindsight. At the time, nobody had travel restrictions. Were they all influenced by China? No, with the then current information travel or trade restrictions didn't make sense.

This is the same lazy argument as with the 737 MAX - why wasn't it immediately grounded? Well, you can't just shut down the world at any sign of trouble. You have to make an informed judgement call with the information you have at the time. Sometimes, ex post, it will turn out to have been the wrong call. Doesn't mean you need to revise or impugn the decision procedure.

<comment><USER18> Well, allow me to remind you the timeline

> On 23 January 2020, the central government of the People's Republic of China > imposed a lockdown in Wuhan and other cities in Hubei province in an effort > to quarantine the epicentre of an outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 > (COVID-19)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Hubei_lockdowns](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Hubei_lockdowns)

What do you mean nobody had travel restrictions? The report from WHO date was on 30 January 2020, when they saw this and yet suggest not to put any restrictions?

<comment><USER20> Imagine if Israel had taken the opportunity to lock-down West Bank in the name of health, specifically prevention of novel coronavirus.

My artificial example is perhaps not accurate on its face, but I hope you can see the principle. WHO was trying to prevent unnecessary border restrictions in the world, until such time as they became justified for health reasons. In China that was already the case.

<comment><USER18> If you have no idea how bad it already was when WHO suggest not restrictions needed, than I would suggest you watch this video

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-nv7j9HEgY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-nv7j9HEgY)

Many of the footage are before the Jan 30 WHO announcement, like the many body moving in front of hospital.

WHO probably already know what's really happening there, but still given wrong advice, so that many countries, like Korean, Japan follow the instruction by WHO, not imposing the restriction on China. And now people in these countries are suffering from the misinformation provided by WHO.

Another evidence WHO is controlled by China, that is when Taiwanese people want to join WHO to get latest update about the virus and help from the world, Chinese government doesn't want this to happen.

[https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/22/china-health- coronaviru...](https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/22/china-health-coronavirus- wuhan-virus-spreads-taiwan-no-say-who/)

So basically Taiwan was excluded from the global health system for long time because that.

I am from Taiwan, I don't feel surprise at all that WHO is controlled by China, as they have shown it that way long time ago on the issue of excluding people from Taiwan. So that's obviously political over people's health in the world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's interesting that the notes regarding transmission efficiency are _not_ present in the similar speach given on the 4th of March (as opposed to the article link, which is the 3rd of March).

I'm not sure what to make of it. It might be pure paranoia on my part - but it is an interesting change in the welcome statements that are otherwise generally similar.

[https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director- general-...](https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s- opening-remarks-at-the-mission-briefing-on-covid-19---4-march-2020)

</comment><comment><USER22> Then how come we see cases where there were no symptomatic patients nearby? Like this CDC screener, no cases where known in the entire state when the person contracted the disease and it happened weeks ago:

[https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/medical- screener-...](https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/medical-screener-lax- airport-tests-positive-coronavirus-n1149986)

And this is not the first such case in USA. So either there are a ton of symptomatic Covid-19 patients in USA right now who are just thought to have the flu, or Covid-19 can spread just fine from asymptomatic people and that was how it spread to the well protected CDC personnel in the airport. And if an expert who follows all hygiene standards and wearing gloves and N95 respirators got it from an asymptomatic person, imagine how many other people at the Airport must have gotten it as well? And how many persons the carrier infected after arriving in USA?

I am all but certain that the statement "We can contain it" is a lie at this point, I don't see how anyone can believe that. At least not without aggressively doing complete lockdowns of large communities before we even confirm cases, but I feel it is too late even for that now.

</comment><comment><USER23> 1\. I would not trust anything coming out of WHO at this point. Even Germany called it a pandemic, yet they are not willing to call it such (perhaps due to political influence/pressure, or just incompetence). This looks more like a 'panic containment' type of statement than the truth.

2\. The R0 of seasonal flu, is about 1.5, Covid-19 has a R0 between 2.6 and 3.5*. (yet to be determined), which is much more contagious than normal flu. This article has no mention of it, hence has no credibility. By any account of any data, Covid-19 looks to be 2x more efficient to spread as the normal flu.

3\. The major cases from the Diamond Princess, the cult in South Korea, and the Eldery Care facility in Seatle, are an indication that the virus is very easily spread in close quarters. That's not a normal flu type of virality, it is much worse.

4\. We have many cases where people still tested positive even after 14 days of quarantine, hence it is not going to be easy to contain. But we don't know yet if a person is still contagious after testing positive after 14 days. No mention to this as well.

TLDR: Don't panic, yet 3.4% of people are going to die, or 10-15% of your parents/grandparents will perish earlier due to this virus.

I am sorry, but that's war-zone like statistics.... and this should be treat as such. (it needs a true war like mobilization to be combated, and talks like this to minimize the impact are just irresponsible).

<comment><USER24> [https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/pandemic- bon...](https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/pandemic-bond-debate- inside-look-world-bank-coronavirus-relief-investment-2020-2-1028906657?op=1)

> The [class a] bonds default if pandemic-related deaths reach 2,500 in a > single nation with an additional 20 or more deaths confirmed in an overseas > country, according to the bank's prospectus.

> The [class b] bonds pay 11.5% annually, but reach default after 250 deaths. > The bonds' payout rate scales with the number of additional countries that > experience than 20 confirmed deaths.

Well? Why are they dragging their feet? Even the official numbers have seen more than 2.5k die in China and more than 20 in Iran. The only question now is whether this is incompetence or maliciousness.

<comment><USER25> I don't see it. Pandemics are objectively defined. The bonds' principal pays for relief in the event of a pandemic, meaning a venal WHO would lean towards categorising non-pandemics as pandemics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> " _First, COVID-19 does not transmit as efficiently as influenza, from the data we have so far._ "

Ok let's look at the data he summarizes in the next sentences:

" _With influenza, people who are infected but not yet sick are major drivers of transmission, which does not appear to be the case for COVID-19. Evidence from China is that only 1% of reported cases do not have symptoms, and most of those cases develop symptoms within 2 days._ "

That's 1% of _reported_ cases. But evidence shows there are many more _unreported_ cases, and these cases tend to be asymptomatic, or very mild. Peer-reviewed research has estimated there are 11x to 38x more cases than detected:

[https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736\(20\)30260-9/fulltext)

[https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0383/9/2/419](https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0383/9/2/419)

Another study estimates there are 19x to 26x more cases than detected: [https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial- college/medicine/s...](https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial- college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-2019-nCoV- severity-10-02-2020.pdf)

These 3 studies are all the studies I know of that try to estimate the rate of underascertainment. I did not cherry-pick these to make a point.

Anyway, this suggests the vast majority of cases might be, in fact, just like influenza: asymptomatic or very mild. And there are no reason to believe they are not major drivers of transmission.

" _Some countries are looking for cases of COVID-19 using surveillance systems for influenza and other respiratory diseases. Countries such as China, Ghana, Singapore and elsewhere have found very few cases of COVID-19 among such samples – or no cases at all._ "

China: the only reason they find so few new cases in March (only 100-200 new cases per day) is not because COVID-19 is less contagious than the flu, but because they implemented extreme response measures including the complete shutdown and isolation of whole cities, cancellation of public events, closing all schools nationwide, prohibition of attendance at work, etc. So of course COVID-19 is spreading slower than the influenza. If China implemented these measures during influenza season, they would likely drastically reduce the number of influenza cases.

Singapore: COVID-19 has, so far, been contained (less than 110 cases country- wide) with strict isolation procedures for patients. I am not sure this is evidence that COVID-19 is less contagious than influenza.

Ghana: it is not even a country rated "high risk" by [https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736\(20\)30464-5/fulltext) but just "moderate risk". And there are no known cases of COVID-19. So in my opinion, it is insufficient evidence to suggest COVID-19 is less contagious than the flu.

" _The only way to be sure is by looking for COVID-19 antibodies in large numbers of people, and several countries are now doing those studies. This will give us further insight into the extent of infection in populations over time._ "

That's the only statement from the WHO Director-General that makes sense: we need more evidence to be sure we can correctly quantify COVID-19's contagiousness.

</comment><comment><USER3> This paper has more information: [https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/pdfs/mm6909e1-H.pdf](https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/pdfs/mm6909e1-H.pdf)

TLDR: "Since February 28, an increasing number of newly diagnosed confirmed and presumptive COVID-19 cases have been in patients with neither a relevant travel history nor clear epidemiologic links to other confirmed COVID-19 patients. However, despite intensive follow-up, no sustained person-to-person transmission of symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 was observed in the United States among the close contacts of the first 10 persons with diagnosed travel-related COVID-19."

They tracked the first 10 people in the US with travel-related confirmed COVID-19, and followed up with 445 people who had close contact with them.

Over 14 days, 54 of those 445 people developed new or worsening symptoms and were tested for COVID-19.

Of the 54 people, only 2 tested positive for COVID-19. Both were household members of originally infected people.

"Both persons with confirmed secondary transmission had close contact with the respective source patient before COVID-19 was confirmed and were isolated from the source patient after the patient's COVID-19 diagnosis."

"No other close contacts who were tested for SARS-CoV-2 had a positive test, including the five household members who were continuously exposed during the period of isolation of their household member with confirmed COVID-19. An additional 146 persons exposed to the two patients with secondary COVID-19 transmission underwent 14 days of active monitoring. Among these, 18 (12%) developed symptoms compatible with COVID-19 and were considered PUIs. All tested negative, and no further symptomatic COVID-19 cases (representing tertiary transmission) have been identified."

<comment><USER27> So... what? These people are picking up _something_ that looks like COVID-19, but isn't? The COVID-19 tests are missing something like 90% of the people who have it? Or what?

<comment><USER3> > These people are picking up something that looks like COVID-19, but isn't

> The COVID-19 tests are missing something like 90% of the people who have it

As far as I know (I'm not an expert) either of those are possibilities, and it's too early to know for sure.

Edit: This comment mentions the possibility of there being 2 types of the virus that spread at different rates: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22489599](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22489599) Maybe the 10 people monitored in the US had the less contagious version? There are a lot of unanswered questions right now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> ... "from the data we have so far."

There are still a lot of unknowns, as stated in the media briefing.

</comment><comment><USER29> "To summarize, COVID-19 spreads less efficiently than flu, transmission does not appear to be driven by people who are not sick, it causes more severe illness than flu, there are not yet any vaccines or therapeutics, and it can be contained – which is why we must do everything we can to contain it. That's why WHO recommends a comprehensive approach."

Ah, so there aren't hordes of asymptomatic carriers out there, which is both good and bad (the death rate really is high)

<comment><USER30> The confusing thing is that the Diamond Princess data points in the other direction: more asymptomatic cases, and a significantly lower case fatality rate, than the WHO numbers.

[https://slate.com/technology/2020/03/coronavirus- mortality-r...](https://slate.com/technology/2020/03/coronavirus-mortality- rate-lower-than-we-think.html)

The WHO says they haven't found many asymptomatic cases (despite looking), but apparently lots of the cruise ship cases were. The WHO estimates a mortality rate over 3%, but much less 3% of the Diamond Princess infected died.

I don't know how to reconcile these other than to suppose the virus has mutated (possible) or the asymptomatic cases were false positives (maybe?) or some demographic factor on the cruise ship was different.

<comment><USER31> The Diamond Princess is a pretty small sample size to be extrapolating the mortality rate.

<comment><USER30> Statistics out of South Korea look similar: [https://mobile.twitter.com/HelenBranswell/status/12352115846...](https://mobile.twitter.com/HelenBranswell/status/1235211584600932352)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The title is just one of those many points made.

<comment><USER33> It's arguably the most interesting/novel of the points, and HN titles have strict length limits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> You are all interpreting this wrong. In a population with no preexisting immunity to either virus, flu would spread faster than COVID.

But there is widespread immunity to flu (from both vaccines and exposure). There is ZERO immunity to COVID.

So IN PRACTICE, this new disease spreads MUCH faster than flu.

</comment><comment><USER24> Just a reminder that this is coming from an organization that

1\. Receives part of it's funding from China

2\. Has been using China's clearly manufactured numbers since day 1

3\. Has yet to officially call this a pandemic though it has met the criteria for weeks ($425MM in pandemic bonds would default) [0]

4\. Is led by a man (the very director being quoted) who was accused by the NYT of covering up no less than 3 cholera epidemics in his home country of Ethiopia. [1]

So you're telling me China shut down it's entire economy [2] and put 700MM people under lockdown and/or travel restrictions because of something about as dangerous as the common flu? Note that the Chinese economy is _still_ not back online - don't believe me? Check real time pollution maps for yourself. The air is still cleaner than it has been in decades.

The WHO and CDC are lying to you. You can verify all of this for yourself.

Hell, 8% of Iranian parliament members are infected. Look at the chaos gripping Iran, Italy, and SK. This is not the flu and I'm astounded that not only are official organizations misleading the public to this degree, but people are buying it en masse.

Finally, after a mass petition, a number of journals released all 2019ncov literature from paywall. You can find estimates for mortality and R0 from many sources, and I don't think I've seen a single one below 2. The Spanish Flu of 1918 was at 2. Of course take these with a grain of salt as they may be oversampling severe cases, but they all point to the same grave conclusions, and you can read them yourself. Do not rely on these agencies to digest this information for you when you have unprecedented access to the same information.

0\. [https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/pandemic- bon...](https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/pandemic-bond-debate- inside-look-world-bank-coronavirus-relief-investment-2020-2-1028906657?op=1)

1\. [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/13/health/candidate-who- dire...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/13/health/candidate-who-director- general-ethiopia-cholera-outbreaks.html)

2\. [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-31/at- least-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-31/at-least-two- thirds-of-china-s-economy-to-stay-closed-next-week)

<comment><USER35> > The WHO and CDC are lying to you. You can verify all of this for yourself.

In a case like this, where you're basically saying that two massive government organizations are broken, and one of which is an international organization which is _designed_ to transcend national borders (and thus includes different member countries, including China), the burden of proof lies with the person making the claim.

As a general response: of course the WHO is going to use China's numbers. If you don't establish some baseline for reporting then what are you going to do? Guess? The WHO does not have people to drop into China and start testing everyone. If China is under-reporting numbers then that's a great shame the world needs to deal with, but in typical situations involving bad data, you exclude the bad data entirely. Are we to exclude all of the numbers reported by China? Multiply by a scale factor to adjust? Pick a random number?

There are many problems in the world and the WHO is not free of problems. Every director of every organization has some random set of things people don't like about them. In cases like this, again, it's important to provide evidence to support your claims (even if that's just basic links to overviews by reputable sources). From there, people can make informed decisions and judgement calls. I don't particularly think you're lying or telling the truth, I just think that not making evidence backed decisions is dangerous, especially in times like these.

<comment><USER35> Replying to my own comment because the author has retroactively added citations. Cheers!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> "To summarize, COVID-19 spreads less efficiently than flu, transmission does not appear to be driven by people who are not sick, it causes more severe illness than flu, there are not yet any vaccines or therapeutics, and it can be contained – which is why we must do everything we can to contain it. "

</comment><comment><USER37> Interesting... i wonder what the data is to back up that assertion?

Another interesting tidbit in there was that very few cases (1%) appear to be totally asymptomatic, and that most infections apparently start showing some symptoms after a couple days. So there are a few assertions in total that seem to depart from what was previously understood, at least through mass and social media.

<comment><AUTHOR> > i wonder what the data is to back up that assertion?

The data is the tens of thousands of cases the WHO has stats on. You can read any of their reports, they've been saying the same thing for months. The main sources contradicting them are random internet commentators.

<comment><USER38> They've not been saying that for months, that's completely absurd. The disease started spreading in November at the earliest. Just a month ago very little was known about its transmission rate and lethality; estimates from reputable sources ranged from 1 to 20%.

<comment><USER39> > estimates from reputable sources ranged from 1 to 20%.

What reputable sources have said anything close to 20%?

<comment><USER40> The highest estimated r0 in a non-peer reviewed paper that I've seen is 6.6.

himinlomax may be referring to individual cases like the one involving a cult in South Korea where one lady was confirmed to have infected approximately 70 people

<comment><USER41> himinlomax was claiming that reputable sources reported a 20% lethality rate, which is absurd (about as high as SARS).

<comment><USER38> I didn't talk about reports, I said "estimates." And yes, early estimates included the perfectly reasonable though eventually disproven hypothesis that it could turn out to be as deadly as MERS (SARS was not that deadly).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> They're trying to avoid a panic, so I'm just looking at the data from now on....

Numbers from [https://bnonews.com/index.php/2020/02/the-latest- coronavirus...](https://bnonews.com/index.php/2020/02/the-latest-coronavirus- cases/)

As of March 4th. 6:22 pm eastern standard

In China:

Deaths: 2,981

recoveries : 49,856

Death/recovery : 5.98%

Outside of China...

Deaths: 272

Recoveries : 1205

Deaths/recoveries : 22.6%

<comment><USER43> All Countries except for South Korea are NOT counting the mild or asymptomatic cases. When you look at the SK numbers, 5,621 confirmed cases and 35 deaths. That puts the death rate at 0.6% (same as severe influenza season).

Everybody just needs to chill.

<comment><USER44> Even if COVID-19 fatality rate is _lower_ than the regular flu, if it infects people faster to the point where those very few severe cases cannot get the help they need because of health services being overwhelmed then it will potentially be resulting in a lot more deaths than the flu.

<comment><USER45> I don't understand people downplaying this by saying it's only as bad as the flu. The flu is really fucking bad!

Before widespread flu vaccination, it killed 50 million people in just one outbreak (Spanish flu). That's more than have been killed by HIV/AIDS combined in history. And we have no vaccine against COVID-19.

Even nowadays, it still kills tens of thousands of people every year.

<comment><USER46> To be fair. Seasonal flu usually induces secondary sickness (bacterial pneumonia) that causes mortality in the elderly and very young population.

Spanish flu wiped out the young and elderly but also the middle aged directly with things like cytokine storms. Something we are not seeing with Covid 19.

<comment><USER47> Correct. Note that there were multiple waves of the Spanish Flu. First wave was fairly mild and hit the young and elderly. Second wave hit the middle aged and wiped out a chunk of the population.

The third wave was slightly worse than the first but much less deadly than the second - I couldn't find much detail about it when I last tried.

Several theories on why it turned out this way, none of them relevant to the current situation though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> On January 23rd, 2020. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus declines to declare China virus outbreak as a global health emergency. As we all know, the Coronavirus is not treatable at the moment. The number of infected and deaths has risen more than ten times (infected from 800 - close to 10,000) within only 5 days. Part of it is related to Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus under estimated the coronavirus. We strongly think Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is not fit for his role as WHO Director General. We call for the Immediate Resignation of Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

A lot of us are really disappointed, we believe WHO is supposed to be political neutral. Without any investigation, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus solely believes on the death and infected numbers that the Chinese government provided with them.

On the other hand, Taiwan should not be excluded from WHO for any political reasons. Their technologies are far more advanced than some of the countries on the "selected WHO list".

[https://change.org/p/united-nations-call-for-the- resignation...](https://change.org/p/united-nations-call-for-the-resignation- of-tedros-adhanom-ghebreyesus-who-director-general)</comment>


A Large Scale Study of Programming Languages and Code Quality in GitHub [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://macbeth.cs.ucdavis.edu/lang_study.pdf <comment><USER2> The claim:

"Most notably, it does appear that strong typing is modestly better than weak typing, and among functional languages, static typing is also somewhat better than dynamic typing. We also find that functional languages are somewhat better than procedural languages."

But how did they determine that?

The authors looked at the 50 most starred repos on github, for each of the 20 most popular languages plus typescript (minus CSS, shell, and vim). For each of these projects, they looked at the languages used (e.g., projects that aren't primarily javascript often have some javascript).

They then looked at commit/PR logs to determine figure out how many bugs there were for each language used. As far as I can tell, open issues with no associated fix don't count towards the bug count. Only commits that are detected by their keyword search technique were counted.

After determining the number of bugs, the authors ran a regression, controlling for project age, number of developers, number of commits, and lines of code.

That gives them a table (covered in RQ1) that correlates language to defect rate. There are a number of logical leaps here that I'm somewhat skeptical of. I might believe them if the result is plausible, but a number of the results in their table are odd.

The table "shows" that Perl and Ruby are as reliable as each other and significantly more reliable than Erlang and Java (which are also equally reliable), which are significantly more reliable than Python, PHP, and C (which are similarly reliable), and that typescript is the safest language surveyed.

They then aggregate all of that data to get to their conclusion.

I find the data pretty interesting. There are lots of curious questions here, like why are there more defects in Erlang and Java than Perl and Ruby? The interpretation they seem to come to from their abstract and conclusion is that this intermediate data says something about the languages themselves and their properties. It strikes me as more likely that this data says something about community norms (or that it's just noise), but they don't really dig into that.

For example, if you applied this methodology to the hardware companies I'm familiar with , you'd find that Verilog is basically the worst language ever (perhaps true, but not for this reason). I remember hitting bug (and fix) #10k on a project. Was that because we have sloppy coders or a terrible language that caused a ton of bugs? No, we were just obsessive about finding bugs and documenting every fix. We had more verification people than designers (and unlike at a lot of software companies, test and verification folks are first class citizens), and the machines in our server farm spent the majority of their time generating and running tests (1000 machines at a 100 person company). You'll find a lot of bugs if you run test software that's more sophisticated than Quickcheck on 1000 machines for years on end.

If I had to guess, I would bet that Erlang is "more defect prone" than Perl and Ruby not because the language is defect prone, but because the culture is prone to finding defects. That's something that would be super interesting to try to tease out of the data, but I don't think that can be done just from github data.

<comment><USER3> You've done a good job of pointing out weaknesses in the paper, but I have a question about your defect rate argument: Would you hold the same position if the study had said the opposite? In other words, if it claimed that Ruby and Perl had more bug fixes (and thus defects) than Erlang and Java, would you claim the study was flawed due to a culture of meticulous bug-finding in Perl and Ruby?

From Conservation of Expected Evidence[1]:

 _If you try to weaken the counterevidence of a possible "abnormal" observation, you can only do it by weakening the support of a "normal" observation, to a precisely equal and opposite degree._

It really seems like a stretch to say that higher bug fix counts aren't due to higher defect rates, or that higher defect rates are a sign of a better language. Language communities have a ton of overlap, so it seems unlikely that language-specific cultures can diverge enough to drastically affect their propensity to find bugs.

1\. [http://lesswrong.com/lw/ii/conservation_of_expected_evidence...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/ii/conservation_of_expected_evidence/)

<comment> loup-vaillant Personally, I have read the abstract alone, and was pleased to see it nurtured my own preferences: static typing is better, strong typing is better. But then I saw this disclaimer:

> _It is worth noting that these modest effects arising from language design > are overwhelmingly dominated by the process factors such as project size, > team size, and commit size._

So I dismissed the paper as "not conclusive", at least for the time being. I wasn't surprised if their finding were mostly noise, or a confounding factor they missed.

By the way, I recall some other paper saying that code size is the most significant factor ever to measure everything else. Which means that more concise and expressive languages, which yield smaller programs, will also reduce the time to completion, as well as the bug rate. But if their study corrects for project size, while ignoring the problems being solved, then it overlooks one of the most important effect of programming languages in a project: its size.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > For those with positive coefficients we can expect that the language is > associated with, ceteris paribus, a greater number of defect fixes. These > languages include C, C++, JavaScript, Objective-C, Php, and Python. The > languages Clojure, Haskell, Ruby, Scala, and TypeScript, all have negative > coefficients implying that these languages are less likely than the average > to result in defect fixing commits.

Notice how top projects in popular languages do have tendency to have more fixes than top projects in more obscure languages. Perhaps these projects have simply more users, leading to more reported bugs and community pressure? Interesting paper, but it is all to easy to jump to conclusions.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> From the conclusion:

 _The data indicates functional languages are better than procedural languages; it suggest that strong typing is better than weaking typic; that static typing is better than dynamic; and that managed memory usage is better than unmanaged._

Obviously not the last word, but interesting study nonetheless.

<comment><USER5> The worst outcome was for Procedural-Static-Weak-Unmanaged, aka C and C++. There is no OO category, since most OO languages can be (and are) used in a procedural style.

<comment><USER6> Because there are no Procedural-Dynamic-Weak-Unmanaged languages :)

<comment><USER7> Forth! (I haven't read the paper.)

<comment><USER8> Forth is untyped, not dynamically typed. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The sample size is too low. It also seem not to weight enough the age of the project. Older project are usually more prone to defect since the amount of changes of specs that they have to go through.

The results for Typescript are completely wrong. Bitcoin, litecoin, qBittorrent do not have any Typescript code [http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/22311/why-does- gi...](http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/22311/why-does-github-say- that-the-bitcoin-project-is-74-typescript)

Double Face palm!

<comment> robert-boehnke Not only are they not Typescript, but they the once I checked were mostly C++, which is on the other end of the defect proneness spectrum, according to this study.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This seems to be really well done and I'm looking forward to reading it in more detail, but one thing jumped out at me: one of the keywords used to identify fixes for programming errors is "refactoring". Refactoring doesn't necessarily (and actually shouldn't) refer to fixing a defect.

EDIT: The Procedural/Scripting split seems overdetermined. All of the procedural languages have static typing, and all the scripting languages have dynamic typing.

<comment><USER10> Indeed. Refactoring means restructuring code in a way that doesn't change its external behavior. If we define bug as incorrect external behavior of code, then refactoring excludes bug fixes.

Refactoring doesn't necessarily even mean that the original code was structurally bad. When new features are added, code gets more complicated, requiring more abstraction. I like to abstract code via refactoring when we need it, not before. Then refactoring changes good code to good code. It's just that the new situation presents different demands to the code than the old situation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The thing is we already know that some languages are much more error prone, than other languages. But languages are not entirely to blame. Before we can find out proper correlations we should answer the question: how these errors came to be?

For example, what caused a typo in a sting somewhere, that now contains "foo" instead of "bar"? Likely cognitive overload, because the code was too complex to keep entirely in memory. I.e. author was to busy processing the code in his head to notice the typo he just made. Therefore code with lower cognitive load is likely to have fewer bugs like this or even overall. Some programmers have learned that there is a way to prevent string typos with appropriate test cases and some programmers keep their code as simple as possible, i.e. with lowest cognitive load. So, we should see correlations to which languages such programmers prefer and which languages encourage such coding practices.

This is a complex subject that has much more to do with psychology, than with technology. And it should be studied as such. Trying to study bugs without touching psychology is pretty much bs.

</comment><comment><USER12> It was interesting to observe that Go/Golang, while supposedly designed for concurrency, ranks the "worst" in terms of concurrency bugs (see Table 8 in the paper). I presume this is due to the absence of any way to specify immutability in the language. Of course, it could mean that because it has concurrency primitives built-in, that people are willing to use concurrency more. It would be interesting to see how a stronger type system would have an affect on such error rates.

I don't get this statement though: _The enrichment of race condition errors in Go is likely because the Go is distributed with a race-detection tool that may advantage Go developers in detecting races._ I thought that including a race detector would _reduce_ race condition errors. Am I missing something?

It was also interesting to see it rank low in the security correlation ranking too.

<comment><USER13> They aren't actually analyzing whether the software has race condition errors; they are analyzing whether there are commits to fix race condition errors. If more errors can be detected, more will show up in commit logs and so the language will be deemed error-prone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> First off, props to this krewe for tackling a large and scary topic, for exceptional clarity, and especially their humility. At about a 1% spread, the differences among languages are negligible.

Even a sample this size is too small:

 _A first glance at Figure 1(a) reveals that defect proneness of the languages indeed depends on the domain. For example, in the Middleware domain JavaScript is most defect prone (31.06% defect proneness). This was little surprising to us since JavaScript is typically not used for Middleware domain. On a closer look, we find that JavaScript has only one project, v8 (Google's JavaScript virtual machine), in Middleware domain that is responsible for all the errors._

<comment><USER15> 1% is not the "spread" (whatever that is), its the proportion of the variance in bug fixes that is attributable to languages. The other 99% is attributable to the number of commits (i.e. projects with more commits have more bugs. Well gee.)

Once you factor out the level of commit activity, language influence is actually quite large.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The statement by the authors that the language effects are "small" is very strange: the only non-language "big" effect they found was that projects with lots of commits have lots of bugs, and that 99% of the bug count variance was due to commit count variance. Well gee.

Once you factor out commit count, the impact of language turns out to be quite large. A Haskell project can expect to see 63% of the bug fixes that a C++ project would see. I don't call a 36% drop in bugs "small".

</comment><comment><USER16> This is dumb, you can not compare different projects, of different difficulty, and of different scope together. You also can't isolate the simple randomness factor that different programmers are doing work on each of these, and that could simply be the cause of difference. Also, having a lot of bugs reported, can actually be a sign of a good thing, as opposed to having a lot of bugs not reported.

Anyhow, I don't think this says anything about anything.

</comment><comment><USER17> I just love this stuff. I am seriously considering a research MSC on FOSS / methodologies so this is catnip to me

However it screams "well we did not find anything much". (Which is good science anyway so props to them)

Choice of language contributes just 1% to the variance in bugs - that is if you want to improve your project quality - don't bother looking at the language choice.

It's an interesting result - but does rather beg the question what drives the other 99%?

<comment><USER18> The other 99% is people. If I write terrible code (which I probably do), I'll write terrible PHP, terrible Perl, and terrible Erlang, and maybe a little bit of terrible C or C++ from time to time, and some terrible Java if I must.

<comment><USER15> No, the other 99% is project size.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wonder if a generalized linear mixed model approach to analysis might be better - I am curious if there was different between-project variation in error rate within each language. And interpreting the proportion of model deviance explained ("1%") is deceptive. Committer number and project size are nuisance variables - we wish to know what the size of the differences between languages would be when applied to the same project. We should also be interested in interactions between project size and language. The paper needs summary plots of the raw data.

</comment><comment><USER20> for Perl, there are three project in the paper, gitolite, showdown, rails-dev- box

gitolite is a perl project.

showdown? [https://github.com/showdownjs/showdown](https://github.com/showdownjs/showdown) it has some perl code in it, but it is a js project.

rails-dev-box? rail dev, do you agree with that?

So I will not read the paper.

</comment><comment><USER21> Developer/team experience is not a confounder? Very believable, nevertheless.</comment>


Popular iOS apps and the open source behind them - <AUTHOR> http://ioscowboy.com/2014/10/09/iphone-apps-and-open-source.html

<comment><USER2> Thats a nice List. You should check-out credits section of the Nat Geo 'Guide' apps for iOS. They list all the open source code they use, and are very neatly designed.</comment>


Before You Post That  a Social Media Analyzer Powered by IBM's Watson - <AUTHOR> http://tylerewillis.com/before-you-post-that <comment><USER2> Some nice info on that site.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the nice compliment!</comment></comment>


Y Combinator Opens A Satellite Office In SF - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/10/yc-sf/ <comment><USER2> I grew up in the Bay Area (and currently live on the East Coast) and I was not sure whether "The City" would refer to SF or NY. I guess it goes to show how myopic TechCrunch is that they didn't recognize that as being ambiguous for a national audience.

<comment><USER3> For an _international_ audience, "The City" means London's financial district. This is the only use of the term sufficiently common to be mentioned on Wikipedia's article.

<comment><USER4> Of course, if you study a lot of medieval history, "The City" always means Constantinople (later Istanbul).

<comment><USER5> Except that was not in English.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Incidentally, if this article were accurate, it would have been short and boring. We opened an office in SF because a lot of the people who work for YC live there.

<comment><USER7> The title of the article is literally the entire story.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> When I read, "In The City", I thought they opened a branch in NYC :-)

<comment><USER9> People in SF (and really all around the bay) refuse to let San Francisco's obvious shortcomings and relatively insignificant size stop them from considering it the center of the entire universe. It's one of the most frustrating things about living in San Francisco, especially if you're moving from somewhere bigger or more interesting. However, NYC transplants to SF are rare; instead, you'll find hundreds of people from small towns across the country and world who must assume all "big" cities (something SF barely qualifies as) are flush with urine smells, mentally ill homeless, an embarrassing public transportation system which barely runs and a terrible male-to-female ratio that reinforces the awkward social climate.

<comment><USER10> >flush with urine smells, mentally ill homeless, an embarrassing public transportation system

      urine: no worse than London, where I moved form.
      mentally-ill: more than London, and it doesnt bother me
      transportation: bad enough that (as in London) I ride a bike everywhere
      weather: better
      start-up friendliness: much better (than when i left in '06)

Not liking SF is fine. Besmuding the judgement of its residents to fit your own tastes: not so fine :p

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The decreasing relevance of suburbia is an important story. Urban living is popular for very good reasons.

<comment><USER12> Why is it popular? Serious question.

<comment><USER13> My impression is that cities are chaotic, unpredictable, and fast-paced, while suburbs are designed to be predictable and to feel safe.

Working in a startup is also chaotic, unpredictable, and fast-paced, so it seems natural that people drawn to startups would also be drawn to cities.

<comment><USER14> Historically this isn't true. There's a much less flashy reason for why so many startups are flocking to SF -- there isn't much space available at reasonable prices in Palo Alto or Mountain View that that's suitable for startups. If office space in Palo Alto or Mountain View was not desirable, the prices would crash.

This isn't new either: there were plenty of SF startups during the old dot-com boom as well. I'd also predict that if there is a further growth of tech startups we'll see startups spread to other areas now considered "less desirable" \-- in dot-com days there were plenty of companies in Santa Clara, Milpitas, Downtown San Jose, Fremont, and even exurbs like Pleasanton. When the boom ended, CA-237 was locally called the "dot com graveyard".

<comment><USER15> While you're right about office space becoming wildly expensive in Palo Alto and Mountain View, I'm unconvinced the data supports the idea that cheap office space is _the_ driver of growth to the city.

As you mention there is plenty of cheap and large offices as you go south along the peninsula, but startups seem to consistently choose more expensive SOMA offices over these. Only startups that need a warehouse or other specialized facilities start their search in the south bay.

I think the reality is that its a combination of factors driving people to SF, from 'cool factor'/perception to quality of life issues (employee proximity) to 'cheaper-than-palo-alto' benchmarking.

By the way, if you're reading this thread and looking for office space, the south bay is a perfectly good place to look. Yes, it's not as glamorous, but it's both functional, frugal, and actually quite nice. The graveyard doesn't consist of dumpy factories, but pleasantly maintained offices with good facilities. You can even live nearby, as long as calm neighborhood is an acceptable condition for you.

<comment><USER14> I wouldn't call places south of Mountain View and Palo Alto 'Peninsula'. San Mateo is an often overlooked option (not as cheap as SOMA, afaik) but in a way it means a commute _both_ for folks coming from Cupertino/Sunnyvale/Palo Alto/Mountain View and for folks coming from the city.

I would say significant amount of startups would still prefer Mountain View to SOMA, but they'd probably prefer SOMA to Santa Clara or San Jose.

There are many positives you've described to places further South, but there are also issues: fewer other startups, less third places in walking distances, being rather far from any kind of public transportation. In terms of employees it's somewhat of a balancing act: there are older employees with family in South Bay, more infrastructure folks (ex-Google and VMW folks, as well as various infra startups), _and_ there are also younger employees, front-end developers, designers, and people with finance/consulting who live in SF. It would be more far more difficult for SF set to commute to, e.g., an office park in Santa Clara than for folks in South Bay to commute to SOMA (fairly easy trip by either car or Caltrain).

That said, Peninsula is exactly what its name implies, and SF is at very end (with hills in between). There will be greater pressure for startups to go further South again, as well as East (if Berkeley/Oakland adopt more startup friendly laws), elsewhere in SF (already happening), and so on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Can we get this title updated to reflect that they mean San Francisco? As it stands, it's too ambiguous for HN standards.

</comment><comment><USER17> Will be a lot easier for tech workers to get to, though this might be less of a good thing if it brings more distractions to the entrepreneurs and engineers there.

On the other hand, it's more convenient for hosting e.g. hackathons.

</comment><comment><USER18> Wow, you're not making people live in unsustainable bike-hostile urban sprawl! About time!

</comment><comment><USER19> Makes sense, lots of companies and founders are based in the city.

</comment><comment><USER20> fascinating ... Im also watching Alias reruns ... Im use to being disappointed in TechCrunch; but it's novel feeling it regarding news.YCom</comment>


Inspiration Package: 60+ Usable & Elegant Designs - <AUTHOR> http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/07/04/inspiration-package-usable-elegant-inspiring-design-showcase/ <comment><USER2> None of them uses the whole space of the widescreen. Perhaps the move to widescreen was a mistake...</comment>


What We Do and Don't Know about Software Development Effort Estimation - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoq.com/articles/software-development-effort-estimation <comment><USER2> Yet another place where intuitions derived from the normal distribution about the behavior of distributions screws people.

An explanation I like, from michaelochurch:

          Let's say that you have 20 tasks. Each involves rolling a 10-sided die.
       If it's a 1 through 8, wait that number of minutes. If it's a 9, wait 15
       minutes. If it's a 10, wait an hour.
          How long is this string of tasks going to take? Summing the median time
       expectancy, we get a sum 110 minutes, because the median time for a task is
       5.5 minutes. The actual expected time to completion is 222 minutes, with 5+
       hours not being unreasonable if one rolls a lot of 9's and 10's.
          This is an obvious example where summing the median expected time for the
       tasks is ridiculous, but it's exactly what people do when they compute time
       estimates, even though the reality on the field is that the time-cost
       distribution has a lot more weight on the right. (That is, it's more common
       for a "6-month" project to take 8 months than 4. In statistics-wonk terms,
       the distribution is "log-normal".)

<comment><USER3> Exponential feedback is a bitch!

When I put together plans and estimates, I always take a lot of care to separate out those things which are linear and those things which exponentially impact other things within the schedule, along with the sort of inflection points. I may not know where I'm going to roll a 9 or 10, as they may crop up anywhere, but there are certainly areas where they are more possible and less possible.

In a sane world, at least. Can't do much with a black swan.

<comment><USER4> In a startup I've worked on, we did estimates based on hours, but also had the "no idea" tasks. We would then make sure to alternate sprints to work on well estimated tasks (as you say, "linear" tasks) and others to work on the hard ones, without a set deadline; or split the team effort in that manner.

I think that's a better strategy than making wild guesses and ultimately falling behind schedule, but at the same time maintaining cadence, which buys you power to sometimes say "hard things are hard, I don't know when it'll be ready to ship".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think many and perhaps most poor estimates are caused by initial estimates being viewed as too high for the project, and instead of deciding the project isn't worth doing at its estimated cost, instead deciding the estimates must be wrong in order to align expected project value with expected project cost.

Perhaps in a twisted future where we estimate project cost before deciding which projects to take on, we might discover our estimates are much better.

A related pathology is trading technical debt for speed, every time, on every project. The debt will be paid.

<comment><USER6> Well, exactly. If I understand the paper, the only condition you need in order to arrive at accurate estimates is the absence of pressure to underestimate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Software effort estimation methods fail because they ignore the margin of error. In Mathematics, engineering and statistics a result does not mean anything if it does not include the margin of error. One month may be one month if the margin of error is one day, and one month may be one year if the margin of error is one year. Classic estimation techniques like Cocomo or Albrecht Function Points ignore this fact. They have no mathematical rigor. If presented with mathematical rigor they would be absurd, because their margin of error is between 100% and 600%. Classic software effort estimation techniques are harmfull and dangerous, because ignoring the margin of error they invite to make decisions that ignore existing risks. No automatic method can replace human experience and wisdom. They have not bound margin of error too, but at least they do not pretend to hide existing risks.

</comment><comment><USER8> Many customers/clients don't even _want_ accurate estimates. Given the choice between an accurate estimate of $x, and a competing estimate of $0.75x with later surprises and deadline stress and renegotiations to pay another $0.35x for "phase 2" which gets the product up to what they originally wanted, especially when the business relationship has "bonded" in a way where it's all rah-rah, go-team, we're-in-this-together... clients will go for the latter path way more often than they should.

Part of the reason estimates are inaccurate is because there's that business disincentive to be accurate.

</comment><comment><USER9>
       Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect,
       even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.

The best advice I ever got on project-time estimation (from a biology postdoc) was: make your best, most honest best effort, and then double it.

When I make projections with a spreadsheet, I have a cell that copies my grand total of all costs and call that copy "unforeseen costs". I always hate bidding that high at the start, but the estimate ends up being close to right surprisingly often.

This article says 30% overruns are common, which is within my former boss' +100% bounds.

The other nice thing about doubling your cost estimate is it prevents you from catching the winner's curse and landing an overly-stingy client. Plus if you really _can_ keep costs within your spec for the project, then you win extra profits. You'll never win that "game" if you don't leave room for error.

<comment><USER10> The advice I got was double the number, and increase the time unit. E.g. you think the project will take 2 weeks, estimate 4 months.

<comment><USER9> I've heard that as well. I dunno, doubling seems to have worked so far...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've been giving estimates for a decade, and still feel like I'm winging it every time. Planning poker definitely works, provided you understand the requirements, and by 'understand' i don't mean you have read a spec document, but that you understand the customer's business problem and have figured out how the proposed solution aims to solve it. Sadly most large projects don't have the time in their pre-sales estimation phase for the team that produces the estimate to build an understanding of the whole problem domain. Paradoxically this low confidence in the estimate will tempt the sales team to cut it even further, since they interpret uncertainty as a liberty to seek the low bound (or even lower).

As others have pointed out in those large projects it's better not to make up- front estimates and just build as much value as possible for a fixed cost, using agile principles. However, that's typically not how large software projects are sold (or bought). Fixed price almost always means fixed scope. I'd like to know of any large software project sold to a customer in truly agile fashion (no fixed scope determined in advance). To me it sounds like a software development unicorn: you hear about it, but you're never the one building it.

</comment><comment><USER12> Often a technical realistic schedule is derived and presented, but the business side deems the project cost is too high and asks the schedule to be "optimized." The optimistic scenarios of the schedule is adapted and revised. Of course reality sets in when the project goes forward and it ends up taking as much time as predicted.

<comment><USER13> That's often what I see. An estimate roadmap is presented, management expresses that it wants it sooner, the roadmap is "shuffled" and "optimized", it is approved, yet reality still sets in during development :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> IMHO it is quite easy to make a reliable estimation of well-planned project. However it is _extremely_ difficult to plan the project more than one step ahead of what is already done... This is why agile development is so popular.

In general when under-estimating the project you can make it:

1) on time and within planned resources,

2) with all the planned functionalities and

3) without sacrificing quality.

Pick any two.

<comment><USER15> > IMHO it is quite easy to make a reliable estimation of well-planned project.

Evidence suggests otherwise. Sure you can estimate +/\- 100-200% early on but that isn't what anyone is aiming for in a software project. Even detailed plans of repeatable (non-trivial) software projects do not result error bars that anyone really desires.

<comment><USER16> I don't know that I'd say it's easy, but it is certainly possible. The big takeaway from the article that I agree with is that historical data significantly improves estimates. If you know that e.g., the last 5 projects took an average of x weeks on the authentication layer, then it's likely that your project will take somewhere around the same time.

The problem is that most companies don't record this data. Start today!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The article says:

"A tendency toward underestimation of effort is particularly present in price- competitive situations, such as bidding rounds. In less price-competitive contexts, such as inhouse software development, there are no such tendencies - in fact, you might even see the opposite. This suggests that a main reason for effort overruns is that clients tend to focus on low price when selecting software providers - that is, the project proposals that underestimate effort are more likely to be started. "

Is that really correct? Are there studies that shows that inhouse projects (or not fixed-price projects) do not underestimate systematically as opposed to fixed-price client projects?

<comment><USER18> There are very different inhouse environments. Some are obsessed with metrics and "improving" results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> An older engineer once told me a valuable tl;dr approach to engineering estimates: whatever number you arrive at, multiply it by two.

<comment><USER20> "Six to eight weeks" was the default estimate my project managers gave for anything above trivial. Long enough to make the task seem difficult, not too long to scare off the client.

<comment><USER21> Do you work at Stack Exchange?

[http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/19478/the-many- memes...](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/19478/the-many-memes-of- meta#19514)

<comment><USER20> Ha! This was the norm at my corp over 10 years ago. Heh.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> We have so much technical debt I can no longer estimate with any accuracy. Something that should take half a day takes a week. Most of the week is cleaning up all of the crap in the code, and then spend a couple hours writing the few lines of code that solve the business requirement.

<comment><USER23> Sound exactly how my management want things to be in a couple of years

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Does anyone know where can I read the referenced studies? I'd be interested if they looked at Evidence Based Scheduling / Monte Carlo simulation: [http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/10/26.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/10/26.html)

Edit:

One of the authors of the references has several articles available here:

[https://www.simula.no/people/magnej/bibliography](https://www.simula.no/people/magnej/bibliography)

but not the one referenced, although there are several newer articles.

<comment><USER24> Found a PDF for this one thanks to Google Scholar

4\. T. Menzies and M. Shepperd, "Special Issue on Repeatable Results in Software Engineering Prediction," Empirical Software Eng., vol. 17, no. 1, 2012, pp. 1–17

[http://menzies.us/pdf/12stability.pdf](http://menzies.us/pdf/12stability.pdf)

EDIT:

Several of the author's articles are available here (click the PDF links):

[https://www.simula.no/people/magnej/bibliography?b_size:int=...](https://www.simula.no/people/magnej/bibliography?b_size:int=9999999&b_start:int=0)

From looking at Google Scholar it looks like there are many newer articles on Software Estimation that the OP does not reference so may not have read.

Edit 2:

This paper talks about Monte Carlo Simulation:

[https://www.simula.no/research/se/publications/Jorgensen.200...](https://www.simula.no/research/se/publications/Jorgensen.2005.5/simula_pdf_file)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> That we don't know whether software development is subject to economy or diseconomy of scale stuck out to me.

Estimation cost (of doing the estimation, not consequences of estimation) not mentioned. Is estimation itself significantly costly relative to subject of estimation?

To the extent open source works relatively well as a development practice, how much of a role does suppression of estimation play (assuming there is suppression; harder to even pretend to hold anyone to an estimate without a contract, so why bother)?

</comment><comment><USER26> Problem with estimates is that once there is an estimate the team can really stick to this estimate. Regardless of quality.

It is feasible for the team to claim that it met the estimate, and it is feasible to have all indicators green on the day the deadline is met. Simply do less design, less refactoring, less thinking, less tests, less collarborative work, less engineering...

</comment><comment><USER27> Can Machine Learning (or NLP) ever help in estimating effort based on expected lines of code where the model would be trained upon _similar_ applications/files that already exist? If so, is anyone researching this in academia or in any research lab?

</comment><comment><USER28> There is mention of tools like group estimates which improve the estimation effort (according to the article).

There isn't much mention of the estimates you can go for:

1) Accurate but not reliable

2) Reliable but not accurate

</comment><comment><USER29> > An implication of these observations is that clients can avoid effort > overrun by being less price - and more competence - focused when selecting > providers.

I absolutely loved this line.

</comment><comment><USER30> Hard to estimate.client think it was easy .most think us like tv show,

</comment><comment><USER31> I never understood why software estimates are so bad when other fields do so well.

When a contractor gives you an estimate of how long and how much it's going to take to do a remodel, he's invariably on time and on schedule, right?

And when Boeing spends billions of dollars on a new plane, they have on ready and on budget, right?

So why can't software people do the same?

Oh wait, complex, badly defined projects tend to run late and over budget. It's not that complicated. Spend 3-6 months defining all the details of your new web application, promise not to change anything on the fly, don't ask us to make it work on IE 7, and by the time we do 3-4 of these, we'll be able to give you a good estimate.

<comment><USER32> > And when Boeing spends billions of dollars on a new plane, they have on > ready and on budget, right?

Well, no, they don't.

[http://edition.cnn.com/2011/TRAVEL/08/07/boeing.dreamliner/](http://edition.cnn.com/2011/TRAVEL/08/07/boeing.dreamliner/)</comment></comment>