Looking at the code I think it's likely Satoshi wasn't a salaried developer. What people in the tech industry call good programmers usually has more to do with team play than sheer technical ability. It's hard to work with somebody else's mess. There's this breed of developers who will take pride at using the latest technologies, having 100% test coverage, elaborate CI setups but completely disregard the actual purpose of the software.

When you're a lone wolf it doesn't really matter.