Idiot Genius

  1. n. Someone who consistently uses their genius capabilities to solve problems in an idiotic manner, for example making a binary patch to a standard C library function rather than simply writing a new version, or writing a highly optimized routine that's called only once in a program's execution. The genius half is used somewhat facetiously, suggesting that the person possesses above-average intelligence in one area (for instance low-level MS-DOS assembly language calls); the idiot half is used somewhat pejoratively, suggesting that the person possesses below-average intelligence in other areas (for instance code clarity or robustness).