Heck, even one given programmer can see his own productivity varying wildly. There are times I could hack away thousands of lines of working code in a single we

Heck, even one given programmer can see his own productivity varying wildly. There are times I could hack away thousands of lines of working code in a single week, and some other times I'd tinker for months getting no actual job done. Overall I managed to ship from time to time, though I blankly admit I failed the most ambitious projects because I was probably not up to the task. Even programming at my very basic ability level (actually I never considered myself to be a professional programmer * ) I've seen a number of people who simply never get anything done, and are 10x less productive than I am. The sort of people who are the heroes of thedailywtf. They never do any better than tinkering around; with some luck they may actually implement some simple code if given very precise requirements because they miss the basic impetus, or the necessary comprehension to start by themselves. Maybe in some huge java drones team, they may add some value, I don't know for sure, I've never worked in a team of more than five programmers anyway. OTOH I've worked with some guys, thumping the keyboard 16 hours a day for months straight, getting working production code out of the frigging door every single day. So I dare saying I've seen it all : the 10x programmer, the 1x programmer (myself and most others), and the 0.1x programmer (I don't know how many). All of this sure isn't scientific fact, but simply what I witnessed myself in the past 25 years. It's enough information to guide me through :) * I'm a professional dilettante :)