Taking a chess analogy - every new chess player is taught the same basic principles - control the center, develop your pieces and king safety. Also, some endgam

Taking a chess analogy - every new chess player is taught the same basic principles - control the center, develop your pieces and king safety. Also, some endgames are theoretical. A queen and king against a king and pawn on the 7th rank will be solved the same way by everyone including Grandmasters. At GM-level there's also significant opening theory which has to be learnt. Yet, everyone has fun playing chess and even Grandmasters continue to be mesmerized by it because of the complexity - there is always something new to learn. Also, GMs have access to the top chess engines and can be studying using the same engine but have radically different styles. They live for the parts of their games that are novel and so do we. If all of our development was rigidly defined, we would just automate it. We put up with the boring parts of our development because we know there'll be parts of it that we can design. If you are a hobbyist developer or a student, by all means, explore on your own and learn from your own mistakes. But that is not efficient if you want to get to the forefront. No GM today will refuse to learn opening theory or study the endgames. We will still create magic and have fun.