"You can't patent obvious shit" is actually patent law, so that's not a suggestion at all... it's just not enforced very well, is it, and that's the whole "mystery".
"Obvious" in US patent law basically means you assembled pieces of prior art like Lego bricks. If you use something nobody ever wrote down, it doesn't matter how many of your peers would have immediately realized the same solution (i.e., whether your disclosure actually benefits anyone), you win the race just by having encountered the problem first.
The hypothetical "person having ordinary skill in the art" is presumed to have some actual skill, to be more skilled than a layperson, to have have some actual creativity, and to have an educational background similar to that of active workers in the field. People who merely call themselves programmers without having any significant skill do not count toward determining what the level of "ordinary skill" is.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but I wasn't suggesting that the "Is a solution reproducible via logical steps?" rule to be a validating rule... It only invalidates patentability if found to be true. Otherwise, nothing.
