As was Mattermost.

That's a really interesting way of looking at it, thank you!

Is there some kind of underlying base that you /can/ apply deliberate practice to?

I'm trying to think of what 10x programmers know or can do that is practicable...

Yes, this is an interesting point. I think there should be ways to do "deliberate practice" for finding better abstractions (reusable components). I would love find those methods.

Or interview prep sites, like leetcode, hackerrank, etc. Or competitive programming sites, like topcoder.

Is that basically the best we can do?

The problem with those is that a lot of HN commenters believe that practicing for competitive programming (or algorithmic interview problems) has little to no relationship with actual day-to-day programming.

Personally, I think there has to be some relationship... But the HN community strongly disagrees (see any of the interview question threads)...

We're very good at convincing ourselves of something. Can you be sure it's not just fatigue? (different from willpower fatigue)

Is this the kind of thing that might be good for a kid (9) to learn as a first step into real CS?

What hosting provider do you use for $0.19/mo?

Netcup