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Comment by hlplan | Hacker News Reader

10x engineers do exist, yes, and they do write clean code. If others don't understand it, it is because they have no domain knowledge or interest.

Even in web pages, compare the slickness of lichess.org to chess.com. The former is elegant, individualistic and non-corporate, the latter has the hallmark of too many meetings and divided "team" work.

We get that sometimes management labels a code slinger a 10x engineer, especially if he is also good at conference presentations. This, however, is not the definition on HN.

I've certainly seen more group efforts turn into Rube Goldberg machines than efforts of single persons. The group may understand the Rube Goldberg machine, tell management that the code is perfect, but it is still horrible for outsiders (sometimes deliberately).

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I think it's not a good comparison. Lichess is a non profit, accepts donations and has a benevolent dictator. So it's evident that its design, structure, and ux/ui has been on charge of a single individual.

Whereas chess.com made 2 million USD in revenue last April. Obviously, with that revenue, you have dozens of individuals pulling in different directions wanting to prove themselves and trying to make the platform "better".

So the former is a bazaar. The latter a cathedral. Non comparable.

> So the former is a bazaar. The latter a cathedral. Non comparable.

Isn't that exactly the comparison being made? A "10x" engineer can build a cathedral alone that does what you would otherwise have to hire a whole bazaar of engineers to replicate, at much higher cost.

(Pedantry: You're actually confused on the metaphor here. The Cathedral and the Bazaar was about development methodology, not individual performance. In fact a centralized, corporate product like chess.com would almost certainly be labelled a "Cathedral" by ESR. A "bazaar" is a project built of high-value individual contributions regardless of origin. Whether lichess qualifies or not, I don't know.)

It’s not pedantry to point out that GP has directly and completely contradicted the original essay. I’m no ESR fanboy (there are better places to get a blend of has-been technical commentary and cunnilingus HOWTO), but the whole BDFL routine is cathedral all the way, with the possible exception of Linux.

My understanding is that is the point they were trying to make. Thibault Duplessis ("ornicar") is the '10x engineer' behind lichess.

Also, it’s subjective. I have hundreds of games on both platforms, and I prefer chess.com.

If you are interested, I would love to hear your thoughts about this. A couple of years ago (Queen's Gambit time frame) I downloaded the app for lichess and have hundreds of games on it. I chose lichess more or less because it was non-commercial. I have a few acquaintances that prefer chess.com, but I have honestly never given it a fair shake. Chess.com looks very commercialized to me, and I feel like I am being upsold whenever I visit the site or open the app. But most of the chess streamers seem to be active on chess.com and not lichess, and some people seem to greatly prefer chess.com. What do you prefer about chess.com vs lichess?

Streamers are paid to use chess.com, though.

I haven't been on lichess in a while, but I do remember being very impressed by the software.

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