People tend to conflate the ability to write code and intelligence. Like any field however, there are smart programmers and there are dumb programmers. The ability to write code is orthogonal to intelligence. In that way, coding is more like literacy.
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When I First Started Programming
When I first started programming, I thought everyone else was better than me at coding. I read about something new and thought I should do that too because they must know better.
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When joining a new team, a common piece of advice is to “gain credibility” by doing undesirable tasks others don’t want to do. The problem with proof-of-worth is that, after a certain point, it has the opposite effect—proving no worth. Being in the habit of doing proof-of-worth tasks takes away the time needed to do high leverage work that no one else can which is likely the primary responsibility of the role anyway.