Yet when it comes to coding, you generally want to follow exactly the opposite advice - "lazy" programmers tend to be the best, because they figure out how to g

Yet when it comes to coding, you generally want to follow exactly the opposite advice - "lazy" programmers tend to be the best, because they figure out how to get the most work done in the fewest lines of code/hours of work. The difference in context is crucial, of course: the laziness pg is talking about is the decision that you shouldn't even try something because you don't have the "stuff" (genius) that you'd need to do it. When coding (and in a lot of other areas, too), you've already decided that you're going to do the job, and it's just a question of how to bang it out most efficiently.