[mikegreco]

Wealth, on a scale of being in the single digits percentage-wise, often has a lot to do with skill. Some skills, such as empire building, get you there faster than others. See Bill Gates as an example. First he built a tech empire, then a charitable empire. The man is very good at enacting world wide change.

Secondly, 5% producing 99% sounds very reasonable. If you ever have the misfortune of having to work with code written by contracted companies, you would realize a LOT of code is slapped together with no care at all. The average person contributing to open source or participating on hacker news cares. The average person coding is looking for a paycheck, and doesn't give a single damn.

[dylandrop]

Bill Gates is one anecdote, but what about the heir to a fortune? Did they build that wealth out of skill? Certainly not. Furthermore, so few people actually give half of their wealth like Bill Gates does [1]. Could you really argue that every wealthy person, or even a slim plurality mirrors Gates?

Also -- you'd have to make vast assumptions to claim that such a huge percentage of programmers just don't care, enough to the point where their code isn't "good". It's not at all reasonable. I wouldn't consider myself in the top 5%, surely there are those who are more driven to improve their skill. But I wouldn't at all say that my code is careless or definitely not "good". Also Hacker News commenting doesn't really require caring, it just requires free time -- not sure what you're going for there.

[1] http://philanthropy.com/article/The-Stubborn-2-Giving-Rate/1...