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> ...and certainly doesn't think of himself as a genius

This is intellectual humility. He's obviously a genius in his own right.

Yes and no. I would define a genius as someone who makes an intellectual leap that noone has made before. Stroustrup is a smart guy who just works very, very hard. As such he is an inspiration because he shows what an ordinary person is capable of if they work hard enough. Just my opinion of course.

Geniuses are often people who work at something for a long time until they slowly accumulate the knowledge and experimental results to make such a leap. After all, Lazy Geniuses don't achieve much, even if they have the potential to.

Alan Kay is undoubtedly a genius, I believe, because he made the leap to OO in the first place.

Einstein apparently once said that the big difference between him and less successful scientists was that he 'stayed with problems longer'.

And Edison, who I've heard (as a kid) [1] had said: Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.

[1] When I was a kid, not him :) Parents and other elders used to quote it. A lot of truth to it.

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