I think the point of "10x" programmer is largely missed because we're looking in the wrong place: at the 10x programmer. It's better to look at what comprises t

I think the point of "10x" programmer is largely missed because we're looking in the wrong place: at the 10x programmer. It's better to look at what comprises the implied 1x programmer. If it's the mean, then there is a really, really long tail of programmers out there that are really bad at their jobs. It's quite easy to be 10x, 100x, or even infinitely-x better than them. Infinitely times better? There are just some problems that bad programmers, no matter how much effort they expend, will never solve. Even if I take 10 years to solve a problem that a bad programmer will never solve, that makes me infinitely more productive on that sort of task over the bad programmer. "But how many problems like that will you ever encounter in your career?" If you're content being nothing more than a CRUD website developer, then not very many. If you want to do more with your career than collect a paycheck, then you can structure a career around doing nothing but solving new, hard problems. I'm a very productive programmer over most people because not only do I know how to do lots of things, I can employ them very quickly. I know it's popular to say we don't have to memorize things in the era of Google and StackOverflow, but there is a real, significant, large productivity improvement for not having to context-switch. I use Google and StackOverflow, sure, but let's be honest, most of the time is spent just trying to figure out what half the questions are even asking, say nothing about whether or not the "accepted" answer is correct and relevant to our tasks. No, I don't have everything memorized. It's impossible to memorize everything. But that doesn't mean not memorizing things out of some sort of perverse spite is a winning strategy. No one strategy is the best strategy; a myth we consistently perpetuate in this field despite the constant evidence to the contrary. You have to employ all strategies. But all most programmers have is googling. I have googling and a larger corpus of memorized knowledge.