The time it takes to write a program is closely related to how many things you don't understand well about such programs. This dynamic creates extreme performance differences between even fairly similarly competent people.
Example:
Programmer A is competent, he has good understanding about 90% of problems that comes up when he programs, so he has to stop and think and look things up 10% of micro tasks.
Programmer B is a bit more competent, he has good understanding about 99% of problems that comes up, so he has to stop and think just 1% of micro tasks.
The time it takes to finish is almost completely dependant on those parts you don't understand, the others you just fly through. So even though the understanding and skill of the above programmers looks very similar, programmer B who has fewer holes in his knowledge will likely perform about 10x better than programmer A. This makes programming very different from sports, in sports you don't run 10x faster just because you reduces your bodyfat by a factor 10 for example, so there those incremental improvements are barely noticeable since nobody who runs professionally has a lot of body fat.
> The time it takes to finish is almost completely dependant on those parts you don't understand, the others you just fly through. So even though the understanding and skill of the above programmers looks very similar, programmer B who has fewer holes in his knowledge will likely perform about 10x better than programmer A.
Agreed. I can't call that a 10x programmer though, it's just a matter of what is their field of expertise and how well it maps to the problem at hand. I'd say that stems from how we collectively use the word "programmer" (or developer, etc) to mean just about anything. Now move both A and B to a project domain where B has more knowledge gaps than A and suddenly A is the 10x programmer. But that means neither is really 10x, it just changes project to project.
To compare to other fields, imagine the top heart surgeon in the country. But then they get asked (for some weird reason) to do a knee surgery. Maybe they'll be able to muddle through it by remembering things from medical school and looking things up, but it'll be a much worse job compared to an orthopedic surgeon who does knees every day.
Would anyone in the medical industry say that this orthopedic surgeon is a 10x surgeon because they did it so much better compared to the heart surgeon? We can all laugh because that's clearly nonsense. But we use such comparisons in the software world as if they made sense.
Or to stay in sports, we'd never say the 100m champion is a 10x runner compared to the marathon champion. Sure they both run, but their skills are in different things.
Example:
Programmer A is competent, he has good understanding about 90% of problems that comes up when he programs, so he has to stop and think and look things up 10% of micro tasks.
Programmer B is a bit more competent, he has good understanding about 99% of problems that comes up, so he has to stop and think just 1% of micro tasks.
The time it takes to finish is almost completely dependant on those parts you don't understand, the others you just fly through. So even though the understanding and skill of the above programmers looks very similar, programmer B who has fewer holes in his knowledge will likely perform about 10x better than programmer A. This makes programming very different from sports, in sports you don't run 10x faster just because you reduces your bodyfat by a factor 10 for example, so there those incremental improvements are barely noticeable since nobody who runs professionally has a lot of body fat.