What do you mean even in sports? What metric are you using to compare on athlete to another? Obviously one golfer won't be able to hit the ball 10x as far or sink the ball in 10x fewer strokes than another. Obviously a gold medal sprinter won't run 10x as fast as the an amateur. But they very well may be better than 10x as many others and that small difference in speed is what makes the difference between winning and losing. The claim the parent poster is making is different, because programming is much different than sports in that he really is claiming that one programmer can create 10x as much valuable work than another. Very different from saying that one programming contest competitor is 10x better than the average programming contest contestant.
> Obviously one golfer won't be able to hit the ball 10x as far or sink the ball in 10x fewer strokes than another. Obviously a gold medal sprinter won't run 10x as fast as the an amateur.
What's obvious about that? I can pretty well guarantee the existence of golfers who need 10x the strokes of professional golfers. I can definitely guarantee the existence of people who can't manage 10% of the running speed of a gold medal sprinter.
Usain Bolt's average speed was about 23 miles per hour[0] when he set the world record (9.58 sec/100m). Nearly everyone can "run" 2.3 mph for a quarter-lap; that's not even a brisk walking pace.
The 10x programmer idea also applies to adults working as programmers. If you were to limit the runners to an analogous population (runners, I guess, or even healthy adults), I'd definitely take that bet.
[0] His peak speed was a bit faster (~27 mph), but the point stands...
