20x is ridiculous - it's far too low. Look at the graph referenced - it describes, on a scale of hundreds of minutes, how long it took programmers to implement

20x is ridiculous - it's far too low. Look at the graph referenced - it describes, on a scale of hundreds of minutes, how long it took programmers to implement something to spec. My biggest problem with this is the time scale. More advanced programmers build generalized solutions to problems and build on previous abstractions. There's no clear limit to how clever someone can be while building abstractions, so the gap between programmers will become greater over larger time periods. Taking a sample of developers creating small, custom websites, better developers will have factored out a lot of functionality into a general purpose web development kit with metaprogramming by site #3 (i.e. created a Django, Rails). Is it unreasonable to accept that: 1) Creating a site with a decent web tool kit is 20x faster than rolling your own with mod_python, and 2) Metaprogramming for creating an (elegant) web tool kit is beyond the abilities of a section of programmers? Now, the barrier to picking up Django or Rails is much lower than writing one, so perhaps this advantage is somewhat less important in a world with open source and extensive libraries? Well, I would argue that in a way, the efforts of the creators of Rails and Django have been multiplied so many times by all the users that they, in effect, have increased global productivity by a factor so large it dwarfs the productivity of a single programmer - so their 'productivity', as measured by the impact they have on the world, is a hell of a lot more than 20x the impact of Mr Blub programmer in the cubicle next door. Why stop at frameworks? What about languages? What is Guido van Rossum's impact on global value delivered by programmers? What about the developers of the microchip? I'm pretty sure my personal productivity would be lower without that. The invention of the internet, which allowed for free sharing of knowledge? What would the productivity of a programmer who invents general purpose AI be? It really depends on how philosophical you want to get. So, sure, the difference between developers creating an application to spec on the time scale of hundreds of minutes is unlikely to be 20x. But that's a garbage metric, and as always, GIGO.