Yeah I really have to agree with you on this one.

There is a reason why programming chops are not usually measured in lines of code.

In my opinion the "art" of programming is to keep things simple yet still solve the complex problems.

I'd say the guy was being humble for sure, as it seems extremely unlikely he would have the discipline to sit down and write something SIMPLE from scratch if he really was a bad programmer.

I've never seen it.

Funny, that's how I usually work if I have the time. I hammer out code that works, then figure out how to optimize or simplify it.

I agree, the guy's comment is a bit of a paradox.