People typically call them geniuses, not masters. And the reason we don't call them genius programmers is that people don't like to use the genius label for people who aren't famous.

Because we're talking about different things.

A master craftsman will solve a problem quickly, efficiently, and elegantly, combining insightful attention to detail with speed and effectiveness.

A master creator will produce work of lasting relevance and power. The metric is quality and impact, not speed and efficiency.

Occasionally you get people like Mozart who combine elements of both, but they're exceptionally rare. And they work best in a relatively limited context which they have mastered completely. They're not perpetually chasing the latest shiny. (Mozart basically knew one style. Even he would struggle to master all the languages and genres that are common today.)

Turing would likely have made a poor backend developer, but he produced work that had lasting impact.

A typical 10X developer will be more like a master builder than a master computer scientist.

I don't find the labelling offensive, because it's clearly realistic. Some people are just very, very good. They produce clean, tight, code at speed, far more quickly than muddlers who produce reams of mediocre code which creaks along, breaks when you look at it, and doesn't actually solve the problem.

But a 10Xer isn't going to be good at everything. If they mostly do backend, they're not going to go toe to toe with game devs. Etc.

I think part of the reasoning is in the trades there's the presumption that to be a master you must also be old (with exceptions, Da Vinci was active when he was still younger, 20).

In the programming industry, there's likely a bias more toward younger people, and hiring offices ask for the world. They'd like a whole staff of masters and rockstars. Though that doesn't preclude "older" people from being known as masters either. Take John Carmack or Jonathan Blow, for example.

That is a interesting thought, that seems to imply that those young programmers will not improve. If you are a master at 25, what do you call yourself after you have gained twenty more years of experience? It may be that those 25 year old's a more like journeymen then masters, or that programming is more like sports where youthful vigor are more important than experience.

John Carmack programmed Wolfenstein at 21 and doom when he was 22. At that point he did what most "masters of that craft" couldn't do. What would you call him? And what would you call him now, 30 years later?

> And what would you call him now, 30 years later?

Something else than thirty years ago, because presumably he has developed since then.

I think that was why GP suggested "journeyman" for younger people, because otherwise there's nothing to differentiate young "masters" from masters honed by thirty years of additional experience -- except adding the whole phrase "with thirty years of experience", which is pretty clumsy.