They mostly got there through the trick of being a good leader and then getting assigned all the credit for their group's work in the history book.
> "There's a tendency among the press to attribute the creation of a game to a single person," says Warren Spector, creator of Thief and Deus Ex.
Stage magicians can spend years conceiving, preparing and rehearsing a "trick". But on stage, when the audience experiences the illusion ... it is magic.
Similar to some workplaces stuff. There can be many man hours of time spent propping up repositories, testing, debugging, logging etc etc capabilities in general.
And when the shit hits the fan and the capability solves the problem ... magic.
Then the audience says "Thanks for solving the problem 10x Dev."
I see what you did there.
Most of the people on the street? Yes. Most of the people in a history book or at the top of their fields? Not remotely. The author of this is in the second category.