While I agree with alecbenzer's original point, I don't think that Dean and Sanjay created protobuf is a signal that they made the best decisions. Everyone has

While I agree with alecbenzer's original point, I don't think that Dean and Sanjay created protobuf is a signal that they made the best decisions. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses even within the same job family. I've encountered plenty of genius-level engineers when it comes to algorithms, architectures, and distributed system design that wrote GOD-AWFUL unreadable and unmaintainable code. I wouldn't trust them to design an API or a common framework optimized for usability. In fact I almost wonder if intelligence is a hinderence in such cases. When you're too much like Cypher, and "don't even see the code", all code and all library choices feel equivalent.