Ask HN: Is an average programmer able to implement the Ethereum specification?

Simplicity is the first design principle of Ethereum.[0] The whitepaper declares, "an average programmer should ideally be able to follow and implement the entire specification." A note then links directly to the specification in the yellow paper.

Has this been the case presently or historically, that an average programmer is able to implement the Ethereum specification? How simple can a decentralized Turing-complete blockchain be?

[0] https://ethereum.org/en/whitepaper/#philosophy [1] https://ethereum.github.io/yellowpaper/paper.pdf