One could argue in every case other than perhaps Bellard that while maybe some programmers are 10x more productive in spurts than other programmers, they average out to a similar productivity in the end anyway. Sure, Eich created JavaScript in 10 days or whatever the story is, but as far as I can see (and I mean no disrespect to Eich here), those 10 days were an anomaly in terms of his usual output.

I can only really speak for my own experience where I do often have bursts of creative output that are extremely productive which are then often followed by days or even weeks of relatively slowish slogging maintenance work.

Am I capable of "10x" work? Yes. Can I maintain that "10x" 100% of the time. No, certainly not.

I think Joel's Salieri/Mozart point is the far greater one than whether anyone is "10x" productive -- some developers are simply capped at a certain level beyond which they lack some combination of the basic creativity and/or fundamental software engineering knowledge that would allow them to perform some task outside of their routine. If all of your developers are of that type, you're pretty fucked unless you're just producing run of the mill CRUD apps all of the time.

Really, these are anecdotes, not evidence.

And I think he chose his words carefully, he said median, not average. Of course - to paraphrase Greg Wilson[1] - if one were to go further and compare the "best" driver to the "worst" driver, the difference would be to the power of infinity because the worst driver is dead. The comparison is not useful.

I'd love to see some studies on this sort of stuff though.

[1] "Greg Wilson - What We Actually Know About Software Development, and Why We Believe It's True" http://vimeo.com/9270320

Great video. Do you know if the book that he mentioned, originally to be called Beautiful Evidence, but that he had to change the name, was published? By which name?

Making Software http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596808303.do

We are discussing productivity in the corporate bureaucracy, not efficacy and fame. And do you have any evidence that the success of those projects were due to those persons rather than the environment in which the projects were developed and supported?

And before you reply, no efficacy is not productivity unless you are going to credit the original microsoft windows developers as productive as well.

Are you claiming that the people who built Windows were not productive?

no, I'm claiming if we use fame, popularity, and complexity of a software product as a measure of productivity of its original developers, then the original windows developers must be 10e8 times more productive than everyone else. Of course they are not 10e8 times more productive, and therefore fame, popularity, and complexity of software products are not good measures of developer productivity.

As a programming achievement, I think you mean ViaWeb, and the Arc or HN.

>Perhaps in 10x the timeframe they would producte something of similar capability

I think you missed a few zeros there!.I would argue that most developers would never (yes not even if they spend their entire lives) come up with anything even close to Fabrice Bellard or Paul Graham.

The difference is not genetic but of attitudes and as we all know very people are willing to change their attitudes.

> anything even close to Fabrice Bellard or Paul Graham.

Are you speaking about monetary gain or programming product?

And depending on your choice, what made you put them in the same league?