How much does one's strength in computer programming dictate their worth? I see such clever programs that do things far better than I could ever do, and then wonder how can I compete with that?

how long have you been coding for?

Hmmm 7 years? But I'm not very clever. I can think critically and organize code nicely. But I've seen code that is far more clever than anything I could ever do.

Cleverness is not a good measurement of worth. I've seen "clever code" warrant an entire rewrite because no one could understand it. I knew a senior developer who left a company leaving behind some cool work in a lot of cool technologies, but all of the rest of the developers were mid to junior level, and no one knew how any of it worked. Granted, a good developer would have sought out new knowledge to learn the new systems, but if someone builds a system that no one knows how to modify, it's pretty useless to a company.