[SoftwareMaven]

Beginners tend to think alike, while experts develop an original line of thinking, that is identifiable.

I'm not sure I agree with your conclusion. Beginners tend to look to others' code more frequently (often including copying and pasting), which means their "style" is really an amalgamation of multiple styles.

On the other hand, even when more experienced programmers look to others' code, they will still fold it into their own style, even when including large amounts of somebody else's code. Their own style shows through the entire project.

However, both of us are just hypothesizing. A great follow-up to this work would be to look at why beginners are harder to identify. I'm sure the other obvious follow up, "how to anonymize yourself", is in the works somewhere.

The other thing I'd be interested in is how well this holds up for multi-person projects. Would it be possible to identify if I submitted code to the Tor project? How much do I have to contribute before identification becomes likely.