[bigiain]

Interesting analogy.

I bet there's scope to twist it beyond all sensible bounds, and compare the ability of the 99% to the 1%.

I suspect there's top level classical, jazz, and session musicians - who're the industry equivalent of 10x programmers. (And all the other stereotypes probably exist too, I bet there are occasional untrained but gifted musicians who can produce 10x output, but who're amazingly difficult to collaborate with compared to degree level music theory trained musicians... And I bet there are "10 year" musicians with one years experience repeated ten times over.)

The other interesting point there is that probably 99% (or more for, five, perhaps six nines) of "programming" doesn't actually require that much hard-core CS theory. You can get paid well playing covers in bars with a good ear and not being able to read a single note from a chart, just by listening to the originals and copying them over and over in your bedroom. Same as you can make a decent living building basic CRUD websites/apps without having written your own compiler that can compile itself or defended a phd that advances humanities start of the art understanding of something fundamental.

[C1sc0cat]

The only problem at that level of musician ship you lose the fun and can end up with some very sterile music that's only of interest to other people who have degrees in music theory.

Btw years ago I did work with a top session guitarist (top 10 hits) who after an accident taught himself to program from his hospital bed.