I agree that there is nothing wrong with programming as an art. I enjoy things like the old demo scene, or writing the shortest code, or other forms of programm

I agree that there is nothing wrong with programming as an art. I enjoy things like the old demo scene, or writing the shortest code, or other forms of programming feats, even elegant designs or proofs. But when I'm building a product and hiring people, I absolutely do not care about those things. I'm hiring an engineer not an artist. If you want to do art in your spare time great, but on the job I want people to care only about building an easily maintained, bug free, performant application that satisfies the users needs. It doesn't have to use the best tech, it doesn't even need to have elegant code, just easily understood, fast, and bug free code. If developers separate code as art from code as a job I think they would be much happier. I know I made that transition many many years ago and am much happier for it. I still appreciate code as art, but in it's place.