[sievebrain]

I had the same question. This Quora thread seems to settle it:

https://www.quora.com/Was-Larry-Ellison-a-good-programmer

tl;dr - yes Ellison is/was a pretty good programmer, enjoyed programming, and could handle serious technical discussions. But there seems to be consensus that the guys real genius was in business. Sounds kind of like Gates in that respect, moreso than Jobs, who I believe was never that strong of a coder.