Holding the program in your head "scales" - at least on well-constituted teams. I was a chief/architect (based on Fred Brooks' chief programmer team concept, long time ago) and was able to utilize some "ordinary" programmers and a couple gifted programmers by doing the highest level abstracting of the problem so they could each hold a sub-problem in their heads. Made the bosses happy, since there was less reliance on any one person, and I was largely replacable by one of the more gifted team members.
Holding the program in your head "scales" - at least on well-constituted teams. I was a chief/architect (based on Fred Brooks' chief programmer team concept, long time ago) and was able to utilize some "ordinary" programmers and a couple gifted programmers by doing the highest level abstracting of the problem so they could each hold a sub-problem in their heads. Made the bosses happy, since there was less reliance on any one person, and I was largely replacable by one of the more gifted team members.
(BTW - greetings from anotehr Gateway-survivor)