The best thing I've seen on the topic is: "Some people have 10 years experience, some people have 1 years experience 10 times".

That's misleading because it's too simplistic. A smart person could spend 10 years gaining real, legitimate experience and they could still be eclipsed by someone with little experience but much more talent.

Talent is no substitute for experience.

I'd say it's mostly the other way around, experience can't substitute for high natural cognitive ability. Of course a person still needs experience, but people with high cognitive ability don't need nearly as much, and people with less cognitive ability will hit thresholds of capability much more quickly. A lot of people live in a bubble of people with similar ability so they don't grasp the true importance of ability. And fakers who learn nothing year over year but have "years of experience", extremely common in this industry, don't like being told there are 14 year olds way more capable than them at their own jobs.

I mean talent is no substitute for experience in the sense that experience teach you things about how the world works which you cant figure out just by thinking, however smart you are. But sure, cognitive ability is a multiplier, and if you don't learn from experience it is wasted.

A have met people much smarter than me who wrote bad code because they were working from a theoretical framework which just didn't correspond to realty.

But your point is only valid if those who do learn with time are either rare (so do not make a dent in the general trend) or they somehow also do not learn much after a certain age, both of which I find deeply problematic.

Programmers by the nature of the profession must be good at learning over time... and I find it difficult to believe someone who is good at learning when at 20, will be bad at learning when at 40...

> some get more out of one year's worth of learning than others get in 10.

Sure, but they probably continue learning the year after?? And the year after??? Or they too, stop learning (or are just too rare)?