The best programmer I have ever worked with used to be my boss. When I learned Perl, he had me write a very simple program to monitor some network printers. When I was finished, I showed him what I came up with and it worked pretty well.
I guess it was to show me that I was thinking too much like a C programmer, he rewrote my program in about 10 lines of Perl.
He was always willing to listen when I had design ideas that differed from his own. When my ideas were better, he'd incorporate them into our plans.
We had a four man team that was probably the most productive one of which I have ever been a member.
