I really like your classical vs jazz analogy, but I don’t think it applies here. You can “jazzily” improvise your way through higher levels of abstraction just

I really like your classical vs jazz analogy, but I don’t think it applies here. You can “jazzily” improvise your way through higher levels of abstraction just as much as you can immediate control flow. The folks OP describes aren’t really exhibiting a skill that’s useful in production at all. They’re just venturing out into the creative arts of coding. They break rules to do interesting things. Which is cool, and might sometimes correlate with commercially useful boldness or cleverness, but isn’t a particularly well-tuned signal. The pressures of competitive coding can open up new ways of thinking about code and about problem solving. But there’s still a big leap from there to any kind of good engineering, startup or enterprise or other. Idolizing the OP’s coders is only helpful if what they’re doing (competitive coding) is what you want to do. It doesn’f speak to commercial value.