[pradn]

The idea of the 10x programmer can mean 1) someone who produces a ton of code quickly 2) someone who can solve seemingly-intractable problems 3) someone who’s presence on a team improves everyone’s productivity quite a bit 4) someone who chooses technical decisions that save a ton of time down the line.

[amelius]

(1) is the generally accepted meaning. The others need different words.

[hobs]

Disagree, those are all valid interpretations, and depending on your experience you will have a vastly different understanding.

To me, the first one is the most basic and frankly, most silly definition of a 10x programmer - produces more code? really? Code sucks. Nobody needs more code, people need solutions. Solving a problem with no more code, or understanding it so a _tiny_ change solves all problems? Way better than adding code, actually much harder to synthesize and produce new results. Way more efficient.

Now can you remove things and solve the problem? Realize you can build an even more simple and generic system that solves your problem? Even more amazing.

[amelius]

> Nobody needs more code, people need solutions.

More code per unit of time, not necessarily more code in an absolute sense.

[firedaemon]

I have always used it to mean “solves problems 10x faster” not “produces 10x code”.

The latter would be a bad thing.