I think it comes down to whether you have high standards. Or were taught with high standards. Or were mentored with high standards. And whether as you grow you

I think it comes down to whether you have high standards. Or were taught with high standards. Or were mentored with high standards. And whether as you grow you have the luxury and the persistence to keep them up. If you do, you fold in stronger and stronger building blocks that over time 'scale' and allow one to move effectively and often more quickly. If you could measure it, it would have to do with the density of the parent tree nodes within which you approach problems. Some people are lucky to have grown under rigorous conditions while yet still being exploratory and developing breadth. If 'talent' is a function of tree node growth though, talent is not going to be bimodal. It's going to be unimodal with some long-tail bias because of the rewards theoretically of being really good at programming.