To me there a good productivity indicator would be the time needed to achieve a desired functionality. For some applications the quality of the code could be measured in terms of the computational expense of the code (does is take too much time/resouces to run). Something harder to measure would be the maintainability. For this one could follow standardized guidelines to produce a more or less readable code. Still there always will be intangible aspects, such as the team work previously mentioned, or coding with the goal of future interoperability. A good coder will solve a problem fast, create code that makes efficeint use time and memory and is maintainable.

I see some potential in combining innovations meant for the netbooks with multiple processors. Low power & lightweight software may mix well with multiple CPUSs.

At the mechanical engineering level a good example would be Alibre, which is a parametric design software (like Solid Works or Autodesk Inventor).