Comment by attractivechaos

I have been thinking what talent means in programming and thought of a case in the past. The task was to parse a text file format. One programmer used ~1000 lines of code (LOC) with complex logic. The other used <200 LOC with a straightforward solution that ran times faster and would probably be more extensible and easier to maintain in future. This is a small task. The difference will be exponentially amplified for complex projects that Fabrice is famous for. The first programmer in my story may be able to write a javascript runtime if he has time + obsession, but it will take him much longer and the quality will be much lower in comparison to quickjs or mqjs.