[Haskell-cafe] What happens if you get hit by a bus?

[Andrew Coppin]

On 16/12/2011 07:05 PM, Bardur Arantsson wrote:
> Michael Litchard wrote:
>
> [--snip--]
>
> If getting hit by a bus is a significant factor in the overall outcome of
> the project then I think those are pretty good odds, aren't they?
>
> (I do realize that traffic accidents are a lot more frequent than we like to
> think, but still...)

The /actual/ probability of being hit by a bus is irrelevant. The only 
thing of concequence is the /percieved/ probability. This latter 
quantity is not related to the former in any meaningful way. In fact, 
due to an effect known as availability bias, the probability of any 
potential threat varies depending on how long you spend thinking about it.

(In other words, if you've never even considered what would happen if 
your sole developer got hit by a bus, your estimate of the probability 
of this will be very low. If you sit down and think about how much 
trouble you'd be in if this actually happened, suddenly your estimate of 
the probability starts increasing. This is completely illogical - which 
is why it's called a cognitive bias.)

Ever heard the phrase "fear, uncertainty and doubt"? It's a killer in a 
business context.

It seems clear [to me] that there are actually quite a few Haskell 
programmers around, and it's not especially hard to find them. The 
question is how many "good" ones there are. "Good" is all vague and 
subjective and hard to measure, unfortunately.

On the other hand, if you just start the project with more than one 
developer on board in the first place, then the possibility of just one 
of them being killed prematurely becomes drastically less serious. (For 
the business. I'm sure it's still fairly serious for the person who just 
DIED...)

PS. Kudos to Ketil Malde for the best link I've seen today.