I've worked with a few, and they've been a mixed bunch. One of them was one of the nicest guys I ever worked with, and his mind had a real understanding for wh

I've worked with a few, and they've been a mixed bunch. One of them was one of the nicest guys I ever worked with, and his mind had a real understanding for what we do. When he learned something, he learned it well, and understood it deeply. A few weeks after being introduced to regular expressions, he had learned them to the extent where he could implement complex expressions, alongside knowing the differences between implementations in C#, PHP, and JavaScript. He was also very helpful, and despite being considered a junior-level dev was helping the more senior-level members of staff all the time. Sadly, he had his own demons. One day we were all called into a meeting and were told he wouldn't be coming back. He had been battling drug issues that had resurfaced due to the heavy amount of painkillers he was taking for past injuries. Work had discovered that he hadn't done anything on a project he had been working on for a month, and when challenged on it he quit. This was a number of years ago, and by all accounts he's still without a job and lives with his parents. One other is smart, but in a different way. I met him when he was a contractor at one of my old work places. At the time, he was brought in to do some Flash work, and after a work night out he told us that he didn't enjoy programming, so he made the decision a few years back to learn legacy tech. He had no interest in learning the best/most popular languages, only the most lucrative, because "you won't earn shit as a standard dev (in the UK)". I still talk to him a few times a year, and it's a gamble that paid off very well for him. He travels across the country and the continent working on things like ActionScript for shop kiosk displays, enterprise-grade Salesforce builds, and ColdFusion support and development. In terms of smarts, he's not the best developer in the world, but you have to have something about you to decide to go against the grain and back technology that many developers actively fight against.