superprogrammer

A prolific programmer; one who can code exceedingly well and

quickly. Not all hackers are superprogrammers, but many are.

Productivity can vary from one programmer to another by three

orders of magnitude. For example, one programmer might be

able to write an average of three lines of working code in one

day, while another, with the proper tools, might be able to

write 3,000. This range is astonishing; it is matched in very

few other areas of human endeavour.

The term "superprogrammer" is more commonly used within such

places as IBM than in the hacker community. It tends to

stress naive measures of productivity and to underweight

creativity, ingenuity, and getting the job *done* - and to

sidestep the question of whether the 3,000 lines of code do

more or less useful work than three lines that do the RightThing. Hackers tend to prefer the terms hacker and

wizard.

[Jargon File]