[logicallee]

It's pretty obvious that there are coders who can do the work of - all of the work of, and better than - a team of 50 talented programmers.

For example when Linus wrote git he singlehandedly outprogrammed every team of version control vendors. He was a 50x programmer. (If not more.)

This is a real literal example without exaggeration.

[ellius]

It really isn't that surprising either. People want to write off the notion that some people are massively better than others at solving problems, but it's completely obvious that's the case. Of course there are insane outliers like Claude Shannon or John von Neumann, but those were real people that existed, and it stands to reason there are people at smaller multipliers who are still much better than average.

[gilbetron]

That's not an example of a 50x programmer, though. That's coming up with a truly great idea. If there is a new device that needs a driver for Linux, I can guarantee that Linus can't implement it 50x faster than a talented Linux driver developer. I think even Linus himself would agree. He's not a magical creature capable of 50x faster software development, over, say, Junio Hamano. As Linus himself said, "Junio really should get pretty much all the credit for Git—I started it, and I’ll take credit for the design, but as a project, Junio is the person who has maintained it and made it be such a pleasant tool to use.”

This is precisely where the 10x Myth comes from. Linus is not 10x a talented developer, productivity-wise. He is 1000x the value of some talented developers, because he figures out great things to make. But the "10x developer" is about productivity.

[Gunax]

I think at this point we are debating the semantics of '10x programmer'. I would say that coming up with good designs and using proper algorithms is what makes people 10x.

I suppose I am saying that if Linus/Junio/whoever can make git in 6 months whereas a regular dev would take 5 years, then he is a 10x--it doesn't matter why he is 10x faster.

[JackFr]

I think a good portion of the story there was thorough knowledge of prior art, the ability to identify what was essential and what was incidental and the fact that he built on a singular vision.

[ivalm]

Sure, but none of those things were monopolized by Linus. Other teams/engineers could have done the same, tried to do the same.

[jodrellblank]

How do you know they didn’t do the same or better? Linus has the advantage of a huge audience (of adoring fans, no less), there were competing dvcs’s at the time - mercurial, bazaar, darcs - and likely many more in companies and lone developer machines which weren’t successful.

If Linus had released Git quietly, but put his name behind mercurial and used it for the Linux kernel, would Git still be the de-facto standard today? Or is his popularity and influence at least as big a factor as his design or code skills?

[hnews_account_1]

Regardless of the success of git, it's novel branching tech was what set it apart. And he did beat entire teams of coders to that solution. Of course his name was what lent it so much credence, but a good solution tends to make waves in online communities. Best example? Bitcoin.

[1996]

> Best example? Bitcoin.

Yeah but people here don't like to hear that :-)

[1996]

Yes -- but you shouldn't state the truth because it makes every non-top programmer feel bad :-)

I have another similar funny example - whoever invented bitcoin, that person single handledly created more value than all the YC startups put together PLUS a lot of other incubators, plus a lot of other companies. I wouldn't be surprised if in less than 10 years, you could add to that the total capitalization of the FANG (as in F+A+N+G) and still that one person will have had created more value -- alone.

It takes some special persons, who have not just the wits, but A) know extremely well one or more domains that are generally not connected - say software, finance and game theory for Bitcoin, or software development, project coordination of thousands of persons and hundreds of companies, and scale/complexity issues for Linus B) has already played with the existing solutions quite a bit and know why they suck C) has the opportunity (free time, etc) to scratch this own itch.

I know, people will often tell how it's wrong, how both project are special exception, but then what about Fabrice Bellard? What about the many others? Are they all special exceptions?

TLDR: I believe Kx programmers have a statistic distribution with a very long tail. There are some K=10, some K=50, some with a K even larger. It requires multiple skills + motive + opportunity. Any missing factor and the magic doesn't happen.

Deny the existence of the 10x programmers if it makes you feel better about yourself. Use their existence as a source of inspiration if you want to improve yourself.

[triangleman]

Ouch the Bitcoin example is terrible and really detracts from your argument. Currently Bitcoin is sucking value away from real economic output in the form of energy (electricity), financial speculation, money laundering, and cybercrime.

[1996]

Terrible? I'm sure free software was also considered terrible 15 years ago at Microsoft! In fact, more than terrible- it was perceived as a cancer!

Linux was sucking value away from real research in the form of copyleft (lost IP rights), financial speculation (VA Linux IPO, etc), hacking and other forms of cybercrime (don't they show nmap in the Matrix?)

But perceptions change.

The only thing that doesn't change much is the value created, as measured on the public markets.

Whether you like or dislike the morality Bitcoin (and there is more dislike on HN as usual), the market seems to indicate its potential is greater than an isolated dislike.

You are free to be like the Microsoft of the last millenium and consider Bitcoin as a terrible cancer. But I think your perception will change with time.

[zaptheimpaler]

There is a market for drugs, child porn, assassination too. Or for email spam, hacked accounts, stolen credit cards, money laundering.

If your conception of value to society is as simple as "people pay money for it", maybe you should reconsider what value means outside of a purely monetary lens.

So far, bitcoin is a much costlier way to transact compared to standard methods - both to the end user, and in terms of energy/resource costs of miners vs. a VISA server.

It probably has some value in a scenario where the government is an adversary. But the government can regulate and track Bitcoin just as well as dollars if they wish to, like they already do in the US by requiring BTC exchanges to collect users identity proofs.

The arguments about how bitcoin is the next big thing and we'll all look silly for laughing at it now are basically empty. I'm sure i will feel silly if it takes off somehow, but that tells me nothing about if/why it will take off. I'll look silly for laughing at ghosts or leprechauns if they turn out to be real too, so what?