Well exactly. The concepts of 10x programmer, ninja, rockstar, etc... appeal to narcissistic people that really believe they're above average or at the top.

I know I am not Donald Knuth or Linus Torvalds or John Carmack or Woz. I am not a rockstar.

If you read Linus Torvalds' Q&A posted up a while ago, you'll see that Linus Torvalds doesn't think he's a rockstar either! http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/linux-at-25-qa-w...

"I’m not a big visionary. I’m a very plodding pedestrian engineer, and I try to keep my eyes firmly on the ground."

He surely thinks that he's one of the best engineers ever, but he stops at the engineering part.

> The concepts of 10x programmer, ninja, rockstar, etc... appeal to narcissistic people that really believe they're above average or at the top

I think 10x programmers are what programmer should be. In the end, we should have people with all of "10x programmers" -- which mean all people will eventually end with the same great skill of coding.

Unfortunately, 10x programmers are real. There are real programmers who can do the same job with less time. 10x teams are real, too. It is mentioned by Tom DeMarco in Peopleware book. Personally, they might not be called "Ninja" nor "Rockstar", but the fact is their skill is higher than average.

But well....

I really agree with Dan Kim here. I think programming is a continuous improvement. You may not end up like Torvalds, but if you are really want to self improve yourself (e.g. Knowing your code yesterday is worst than today and really want to know how to make the code better), then it is good enough.

IMHO, to reach this summit ("10x"), it is very-very hard. You can improve your skill by doing one of these way:

* By volume. Just do so much thing in your field and voila, you will mastery that skill. Just like pilot. Or,

* By supervisioned learning. This is what we know by "mentorship". You may don't know "how to start" if you learn by volume. With supervisioned learning, you can make the learning faster and enjoy the outcome earlier.

Certain degree of narcissist traits can be beneficial if it translates into taking pride in your work.

"We will encourage you to develop the three great virtues of a programmer: laziness, impatience, and hubris" (Larry Wall)

You don't need to be Donald Knuth - or Larry Wall - to be above average :)

At my most pessimistic moments, I think that just knowing who Donald Knuth and Larry Wall are is strongly correlated with being above-average.

Well, laziness in terms of typing more, probably. Laziness in terms of thinking less, definitively no.

LAZINESS: The quality that makes you go to great effort to reduce overall energy expenditure. It makes you write labor-saving programs that other people will find useful, and document what you wrote so you don't have to answer so many questions about it. Hence, the first great virtue of a programmer.

IMPATIENCE: The anger you feel when the computer is being lazy. This makes you write programs that don't just react to your needs, but actually anticipate them. Or at least pretend to. Hence, the second great virtue of a programmer.

HUBRIS: Excessive pride, the sort of thing Zeus zaps you for. Also the quality that makes you write (and maintain) programs that other people won't want to say bad things about. Hence, the third great virtue of a programmer.

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?LazinessImpatienceHubris

Of course, anyway I meant to point out "hubris" (as a response to singling out "narcissism" as a flaw) :)

I totally agree, but can I argue that you're not not them either? Anyway to each his own.

You're entirely right, but it's a stupid plan. You know what happens when you get a bunch of college kids to build things? You get something that, uh, looks and acts like a thing built by a bunch of college kids. IE, a dumpster fire. It turns out experience matters. I can't even get mad at the people that perpetuate this, because they're going to get what they deserve.

Many of the most valuable tech properties today were built by college kids, or better yet college dropouts. It turns out that having your whole life ahead of you matters, because you're more willing to take risks.

My point isn't that young people are incapable (some of them are great), rather, that the people that think they can build something by taking advantage of naivete are going to quickly discover that for every young brilliant programmer, there's 10 people that will some day be good, but at the moment they're inexperienced and they'll create junk if they're not mentored.

But it's true, many of these companies are designed to be flipped, technical excellence might be a secondary concern. Ninjas beware.

Oh yeah, agreed, but capitalism doesn't care, just throw shit at the wall and see what sticks...

Probably building something in grad school helps.

I think you severely underestimate the amount of serious work put into all these "tech properties" (I'm guessing you mean Facebook/Dropbox) by very experienced, in-demand engineers.

There's a survival bias at play here. We remember the (very) few companies that survive to become tech giants. We don't remember - haven't even heard of, really - the vastly greater number of ventures that crash shortly after liftoff.

Yet, if a young company built by collage kids is bought out the parent company generally dumps the source code as worthless. That might tell you something. The same thing happens at successful company's you just don't see it. Twitters Fail Whale did not end because they brought on more collage kids.

Started, as in MVP. Additionally, some of those properties were built while in college by brilliant developers who dropped out to run their then growing companies. There have been many many many more companies started by kids who have failed miserably.

Or maybe it's more about having less to lose. Once you have kids and mortgage you're less likely to take risks.

It was not built by college kids. A prototype was built by college kids which was then commercialized by billionaires. The college kids got the credit, and some dough, and the billionaires got 70%+ of the profit. The stuff was built by a team of engineers, some young and some old.

> IE, a dumpster fire.

Indeed it is.

I think that's unfair to Edge. :)

A VC payday?

Seriously though, that's what many of these people /will/ get. Worse, they'll actually believe it was their own talent that got them there. The world is a cruel and unfair place.

I think of it as a pandering attempt to connect with programmer subculture through aspirational ego.

My point is that they are trying to attract those that identify with the programming subculture. Many fantastic programmers don't identify with that subculture but they aren't looking to hire them.