[ewolf]

"Someone smarter than you" perhaps is a bit too bold of a statement, but generally, it is true that using available code should usually be preferred over writing one's own code. It allows you to focus on your main task and spend less time implementing helper functions that someone with more time (I guess that's a better expression than "someone smarter") has already optimized.

[hackinthebochs]

Don't get me wrong, I totally agree that using pre-existing code in most situations is far preferable than re-inventing things, especially when it comes to incredibly uninteresting "plumbing" code like DOM manipulation. But instead of referencing intelligence, the justification should be something like "someone already spent the time and effort optimizing something I have no interest in doing myself". Just like it has been shown that praising kids for their intelligence leads to worse outcomes, we should not be artificially limiting ourselves based on intelligence.

[LukeShu]

I'd generally interpret "smarter than me" in this context as "has put more brain-cycles into this problem than I will", so with regards the that specific problem, they are "smarter".