Being a "Great Coder" and 10000 Hours
There really is a meme here I think, and it relates to ego.<p>Having said that, I definitely do think there is truth in massive variations between programmers, though I personally think that is a combination of a small pre-requisite talent (the ability to code at all, which I think a surprisingly small amount of people have - simply a genetically determine brain configuration), and mostly attitude + hard work.<p>For example, I took part in the recent Stanford AI class, though not about programming specifically, I was utterly down-heartened when I heard they sent out those 'send me your CVs you clever people!' emails to the top 1k students, it just made me feel like a lot of people were taking part in order to participate in a 'look how much cleverer I am than you' pissing match.<p>That kind of things ruins the collaborative 'learning for the joy of learning' side of things and has a tendency to make the whole thing into a sort of nasty elitist thing. I really wish they hadn't done that (N.B. I did fine on the course - 98.7% - so this isn't sour grapes).<p>The biggest problem with anything like this is the idea that 'here is some test of inherent intelligence - I am far better than you so you are inherently unable to do this thing' which is just the biggest barrier to actually trying to do something - if you think you inherently suck or at least are simply mediocre, your motivation to do that thing is severely reduced.<p>or perhaps I'm just ranting/projecting here :)