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A comment on The Myth of the Myth of the 10x Programmer. Parent comment

Re:The Myth of the Myth of the 10x Programmer by Nition on Monday February 17, 2020 @04:56PM (#22351210)
Not to diminish the achievement, but worth noting I think that RollerCoaster Tycoon was based on his earlier Transport Tycoon engine, so at least he did get to split the work up between two projects.

I have a personal theory the that the average 10x programmer is say 2.5x smarter than average, but also 4x more focused on work, netting a 2.5x4=10x total when you remove all the procrastination and general fumbling around of the average developer.

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Re:The Myth of the Myth of the 10x Programmer by JackFr on Monday February 17, 2020 @05:58PM (#22351742)
> worth noting I think that RollerCoaster Tycoon was based on his earlier Transport Tycoon engine,

The 10x productivity comes in large part from the code they DON'T write.

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Re:The Myth of the Myth of the 10x Programmer by jacquesm on Tuesday February 18, 2020 @09:51AM (#22356426)
And from writing things the right way the first time around rather than on iteration #3 or so.
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Re:The Myth of the Myth of the 10x Programmer by karatestomp on Monday February 17, 2020 @05:07PM (#22351309)
Environment and control (true ownership) can easily turn 1x into 10x, I'd say. Not saying I could churn out Rollercoaster Tycoon but I bet I'd look, by every metric both reasonable and unreasonable, a hell of a lot more productive working on a game solo with 100% control of all decisions and not having to fret about having something to report in standup every day versus... normal work.
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Re:The Myth of the Myth of the 10x Programmer by passivepinetree on Monday February 17, 2020 @09:06PM (#22352821)
There’s an easy way to find out if that’s true, and it’s to making a similarly successful solo project by yourself!
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Re:The Myth of the Myth of the 10x Programmer by karatestomp on Tuesday February 18, 2020 @12:53AM (#22353803)
Productively building and finding the right thing to build to be successful are different things, and one can be good at either while being terrible at the other.
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Re:The Myth of the Myth of the 10x Programmer by ClumsyPilot on Monday February 17, 2020 @10:04PM (#22353105)
Please dont say that, it's very, very easy to produce beautiful code that will never make any money!
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Re:The Myth of the Myth of the 10x Programmer by thombat on Monday February 17, 2020 @05:01PM (#22351250)
That 4x more focused means "it ain't me, coz right now I'm commenting on HN" ...
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Re:The Myth of the Myth of the 10x Programmer by Nition on Monday February 17, 2020 @05:06PM (#22351294)
Exactly!
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Re:The Myth of the Myth of the 10x Programmer by catalogia on Monday February 17, 2020 @06:20PM (#22351873)
The praise given to him for Rollercoaster Tycoon could easily also be given to him for Transport Tycoon, which was also a great game. The community really took it to amazing heights with OpenTTD, but the original was great.
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Re:The Myth of the Myth of the 10x Programmer by _pmf_ on Tuesday February 18, 2020 @03:06AM (#22354301)
> so at least he did get to split the work up between two projects.

That makes him twice as productive, not half.

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Re:The Myth of the Myth of the 10x Programmer by steveeq1 on Monday February 17, 2020 @05:40PM (#22351599)
Or he's using better tools and languages. (ie, smalltalk vs javascript)
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Re:The Myth of the Myth of the 10x Programmer by yesbabyyes on Tuesday February 18, 2020 @04:53AM (#22354737)
One of the premises of this thread was him writing the game in x86 assembly.
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