I've listened to ATP since day one. My impression of Siracusa as a programmer is limited to the few apps he's released. But he could be a fantastic programmer at his "jobby-job." Or he could just be average. We have no way of telling, despite how intelligent both his writing and his speaking on the podcast might convey.

Marco is very successful with Tumblr, Instapaper, and Overcast, yet we don't know how good a programmer he is. He's made great money, and has strong opinions, but again, we don't know how good a programmer he is.

Casey used to have a "jobby-job" before leaving the corporate world. So he too might be a good, bad or excellent programmer. We don't know.

It's kind of like how you don't really know someone until you live with them. For programming, it's until you've worked with them and seen their code. All three of the hosts might be world class; or they might be average. But there's no way to determine who is the strongest programmer of the three.

We can debate who's been more successful selling their code, but we don't know where Siracusa works and code/app sales are a poor metric for code quality.