Depends on your definition of "smartness". In my book the ability to assess the importance of things and their relevance to given task and ability to prioritize accordingly is very important aspect of being smart. The guy who 'does not like comments because they slow the PHP interpreter down' does not seem to be that smart.
And the mundane task of coding is probably not the most important part of any developers job. Understanding fully what the spec/task requires including covering the use cases the designer forgot to mention.
