> there is not a shred of evidence that the best professional developers are an order of magnitude more productive than median developers at any timescale,
I beg to differ, using examples of Fabrice Bellard creating QEMU, Brendan Eich creating JavaScript or PG creating Arc and HN. Of course there are other examples out there, one just ought to look. Those are not tasks a single `industry average' developer or a team of such, can pull in similar timeframes. Perhaps in 10x the timeframe they would producte something of similar capability, but not necessarily of matching quality.
I beg to differ, using examples of Fabrice Bellard creating QEMU, Brendan Eich creating JavaScript or PG creating Arc and HN. Of course there are other examples out there, one just ought to look. Those are not tasks a single `industry average' developer or a team of such, can pull in similar timeframes. Perhaps in 10x the timeframe they would producte something of similar capability, but not necessarily of matching quality.