Hmmm. For the last 19 years, I have been a contract programmer. I am still a contract programmer. The average tenure of a self-employed consultant is 2.5 years. Only those of us who can compete effectively can survive this long is to be GOOD. This does not mean that I view my world as "competitive". But I do not see myself as an "elite" in the sense the original article intended. I'm among the best of the best, but I didn't get that way be being competitive; I got that way by becoming better than I was last year. Do this long enough and you naturally become good. But considering yourself an "elite" is an unhealthy idea. This suggests that you don't want anyone else there. I endeavor to bring as many people as I can up to my level.

The notion that programmers should be (a) tribal and (b) competitive is really rather bizarre, to say the least. I specialize in a number of areas, but that is due to lack of time to become expert in all of them. But "competitiveness" was never a concept I had. In any case, C# in particular is a MASSIVE set of libraries; becoming expert in all of them presents the same challenges as with any large technology. We will find niches to inhabit. I will no more be a universal expert in all of C# than I am a universal expert in all of Win32. Anyone who thinks they should be part of an "elite" should re-examine their life's goals. We become experts because of what we do, not because of of some bizarre fourth-order effect such as tribalness or competitiveness. Otherwise, we are back in the high-priest-of-the-computer cults of the 1960s

This is a really bad idea. It means the other class has knowledge about the details of the implementation of the representation, which is none of its business. This violates basic principles of object oriented programming, data abstraction, etc. Even the idea that it is a list control should be a secret from all other classes.