Or, it is how some programmers continue to find motivation and fulfillment in the activity as an intellectual pursuit, yes at the cost of maintainability, but a

Or, it is how some programmers continue to find motivation and fulfillment in the activity as an intellectual pursuit, yes at the cost of maintainability, but as opposed to being good little corporate drones writing a zillion dull lines of kindergarten-obvious code in Golang and Java that even the lowest decile of programming dunce can understand. Which is what Golang is designed to do. That's what they mean by optimization for large code bases: dumbing down. That's not a criticism by the way because that's optimal for large teams in large companies with large code bases and no room for too much creativity. But programming as art/fun, where appropriate, is also not (yet) completely to be dismissed as stupid, IMO.