I personally, as a programmer and a person, would rather work with Gabriella than Rodrigo. While it is definitely true that Rodrigo is a much better person, if I can't depend on him to get me his good code by the deadline, I would rather have Gabriella's "working" code, because, hey, it WORKS, and it meets the deadline -- the biggie here. If I can't depend on him to communicate with me and who ever else we work with, it is another negative for him.
I don't know about other programmers, but for me, the better I understand my teammates and/or colleagues, and the better we perform as a whole, the better I perform individually.
I also would rather optimize Gabriella's code than have no code at all from Rodrigo. Although, after reading one of the comments below, if Rodrigo was missing deadlines by a small margin, let's say only by a few days, I would much rather get code from him. If I was his manager instead of his project teammate, I wouldn't mind his in-depth technical explanations as much, mostly because I do the same thing, and I value expanding my own knowledge well beyond its borders over just getting a brief overview without the how and why because without them, the what is almost worthless by itself if the manager has to turn around and provide instructions to the team based on the how and why that s/he was not given.
I don't know about other programmers, but for me, the better I understand my teammates and/or colleagues, and the better we perform as a whole, the better I perform individually.
I also would rather optimize Gabriella's code than have no code at all from Rodrigo. Although, after reading one of the comments below, if Rodrigo was missing deadlines by a small margin, let's say only by a few days, I would much rather get code from him. If I was his manager instead of his project teammate, I wouldn't mind his in-depth technical explanations as much, mostly because I do the same thing, and I value expanding my own knowledge well beyond its borders over just getting a brief overview without the how and why because without them, the what is almost worthless by itself if the manager has to turn around and provide instructions to the team based on the how and why that s/he was not given.