The field has to accept some knowledge deficits if it's going to pretend to meet business demands. I thought the original post heavily implied that the 'dumber' programmer shouldn't be hired or have a job; are we going to turn away all potential C programmers until they've mastered everything that the 'smarter' programmer knew? I'd say that would heavily discourage new C programmers if they had to commit to mastering all of that before they could think about getting a position. That would lead to shortages, of course.