I can't understand how he could build a perfect UI for a forum and then kludge it that way. It's like a Rembrandt with a stick figure in the corner.

Of course as a programmer I doubt Scott has many equals. I imagine all the people who built Windows NT were individually great programmers. So how did the collective effort turn out so badly?

One word, committees. The best software is usually the creation of one or two people without demands other than their own desire to solve the problem.