I don't really see anything about this that suggests he can't actually program. The worst bit might be this: "... if you ask me to sit down and code up a new a

I don't really see anything about this that suggests he can't actually program. The worst bit might be this: "... if you ask me to sit down and code up a new application from scratch I will spend ten times longer than programmers who are much more junior than me." That doesn't sound so bad to me. It kind of implies that he can still get the job done, just more slowly than some others. I don't know if that should be a "I can't program" qualifier, though. He must not think that his extra coding time adds any value to the process. In my case, I know I'm not always the fastest around, but I like to think that my code is better designed and easier to maintain than the average (* may or may not be true...) because I'm almost pathological about building my applications from small, self-contained components, never having the same logic exist in more than one place if at all possible, and perhaps most importantly, clean, clear and consistent naming conventions. That kind of stuff takes time but, IMO, improves overall quality in immeasurable ways. Speed isn't everything.