[api]

> in many activities, people tend to go to the greatest lengths for even the smallest gains

It's a show-off / machismo thing. In our own field I'd relate it to the culture of extreme workaholism. If you are working 100 hour work weeks you are almost certainly not being productive for anywhere near that many hours unless you are on drugs, and that's sustainable for at most a week or two before you crash hard. In my experience people who claim that kind of loony work week are usually lying. The only exception seems to be natural manic personalities, but that mutation comes with its own set of serious drawbacks.

[pnw_hazor]

I think it more related to a mastery of a skill that is difficult to master. Such that knowing that skill sets one apart from the average programmer.

I am not sure of a good example tech, but maybe something like being the one person in the shop that has completely mastered a subject matter area that others haven't bothered to learn because it is too hard/confusing? Maybe, the device driver coder versus the application coder, etc. The amount of hours put in grinding at the office may be the same, but some people have mastered skills that are perceived as elite over other skills.

Pointe is a first level elite skill in Ballet. Some dancers may learn pointe faster or slower than others, but most dancers never will. By the time dancers are decent/comfortable on pointe and yet still far from professional level, they will be in an elite group.

edit-to-add: A big weakness with my analogous examples is that I feel that any decent programmer can learn device drive programming, difficult APIs, new data structures/algos, and so on, if they put the time in.

In contrast, many dancers that would like to dance pointe will be unable to, no matter how hard they try. Same with figure skaters who want to land a single Axel in competition. Chess mastery might be a good example too.