This is partly true, I think. But it's more a problem of focus: the interesting part to many smart developers (and developers in general) is the initial solving

This is partly true, I think. But it's more a problem of focus: the interesting part to many smart developers (and developers in general) is the initial solving of a problem. Very clever developers can go much longer without refactoring, since their cognitive capacity is higher. They can get through the initial problem solve in a single go, potentially, and have a complete mess on their hands. This is only bad if they stop there, though (many do). If they then put that cleverness to use _simplifying_ the code, they can produce some of the cleanest and best models for problems that you'll see. There's often no upside to it, though, so many just skip that step. Unfortunately.