Thanks for the perspective. I'm not a musician but have some among my friends and family where I've observed their general approach over decades. I think your

Thanks for the perspective. I'm not a musician but have some among my friends and family where I've observed their general approach over decades. I think your point about similarities among some composers or genres is akin to the point about similarities in a genre of programming. You can easily produce your Nth version of CRUD app, audio or video filter, standard statistical analysis, etc. But changing to a different genre can require significant practice and learning. I think musicians face this just like programmers, without having to change instruments. I think that musicians must do a lot more regular work, like athletes, to retain or recover their physical form. But, I don't really believe there are "programmer's hands" that can get clumsy after mere months of downtime. After all, even if our typing slows down, it isn't really a gating factor in being able to produce complex products. It might even be a benefit, when it biases one towards more compact solutions rather than churning out baroque monstrosities!