I think it is false dichotomy. "Best" programmers at least do nothing before they have a plan and HLD (good or bad). Productive programmers simply get things done both ways, good or bad. I've seen many times how we "productively" produced overengineered unreadable spaghetti that works. Yeah, I can write even straighter single-page perl golf too to show selling prototypes, but that's not what we are paid for as a company. That can be outmanaged by detailed design specification, but then you have to have an expertise at the code level (easy) and spend half time on the task yourself (hard).

Both types can do good or bad for you.

Edit: iow, smart and get things done, not or.