Linus Torvalds was the first 1000x programmer

I’ve worked closely with hundreds of programmers over decades. There were always some people who were shockingly more productive compared to everyone else. Not in terms of typing code faster, although they often did write code faster. Mostly they just made better decisions, so their work compounded. They could move from project to project making huge improvements while also reducing tech debt.

Some people like to argue and even take offense at the idea of the “10x programmer” but I’ve seen it too many times to even care to debate it. Lots of 10x and 100x programmers exist, and at least one 1000x programmer.