The author is, if this is all real, one of the most prolific programmers I’ve seen. Wow! Can I have some of what he’s on?

I ask this honestly, possibly because I'm of an inferior build, but do these types of people have jobs?

SHOCKING DEVELOPMENT "Nobody knows"

It sounds like OP is in university, so they could have anywhere from no free time to mostly free time.

What made you think that? Based on the author’s Twitter feed [1] and own website [2] they currently work at Notion

[1] https://twitter.com/thesephist [2] https://thesephist.com/

They say in the OP that they did this as opposed to database homework.

This project is from a couple of years ago. Sibling comment is correct that I'm working now.

It's clear that the "author" is a +10x engineer. It's rare to come across someone with such a broad range of interests and abilities, and their contributions to open-source software are truly remarkable.

The secret is that they always write "you" as "u" and then spend all the time saved on programming.

Correct. This is also, incidentally, why startups innovate faster than established companies - people in the corporate world waste so much time on typing things like "To whom it may concern", or "Looking forward to hearing from you", or, you know, on written communication in general.

It seems to me that people name Linus are destined for greatness.

* Linus Torvalds (The OG)

* Linus Sebastian (Linus Tech Tips)

* Linus Lee (Author)

This guy ships!

Look how rolling his own basically everything, except an OS, seems to work pretty well.

Given time and ability, making what you need almost from scratch may be not just viable, but productive.

Yes, as a lone developer. If you're working in a team it's less likely to work out well as you will have a much more significant training period for anyone to join one of your projects (in a team environment it's wise to go with "boring").