Reaching a point of competency even in playing Mozart on a violin takes a lot of time, and that doesn't change a bit for the next decade. Most people don't reac

Reaching a point of competency even in playing Mozart on a violin takes a lot of time, and that doesn't change a bit for the next decade. Most people don't reach a level competency in their whole career, because they don't put in enough effort. Additionally have you spent some time without coding? Because I was upgraded to project manager I haven't actively coded in 4 months. I feel I'm significantly slower now. You forget the small details. Like yesterday I had to think about how to call "git mergetool". That meant my brain didn't think about why I would need to solve a merge conflict instead of doing something else (like ignoring one branch, or writing feedback on the pull request) but instead I've spent the time thinking about how to type the command. That doesn't directly slow you down, but that decreases your output significantly. We are talking "top developers", not average developers right? Yes most people think of themselves they are "top developers" but in truth most are "average" which is (arguably) less than "mediocre". If you are fine being "average" the whole discussion thread doesn't apply to you and I agree with you that slacking off for a few years doesn't change that status a lot.