[mikecb]

Two mistakes in his reasoning that make that point in particular not well put:

1. It takes time, and only time, to develop this skill. It can't be ordered by fiat. He hired junior devs, so this is what he gets.

2. He's thinking in terms of absolute advantage, not comparative advantage. Even if he could code the item more efficiently, it's worth it for him to give it to them.

As for your peers, mandatory/automated testing, mandatory code reviews, automated formatting, pair programming: all are designed to teach people to be better programmers. Implementing some/all of the above won't directly cause an issue between you and the coworker and will help everyone's code become better.

[cauterized]

As for point 2, if he's going to be reading it anyway, then there's no comparative advantage either.