I can relate. This sort of trade off exists today in almost all commercial code. Sharp enough to do the job, but not sharper. A solo programmer can afford to b

I can relate. This sort of trade off exists today in almost all commercial code. Sharp enough to do the job, but not sharper. A solo programmer can afford to be an artisan, but commercial code is rarely artisanal. It's full of trade-offs and compromises. Commercial code is always about business costs -- maintenance cost, buy-vs-build cost, refactoring cost, business continuity costs, etc. You're always working under constraints like time, headcount, available expertise, maintainability, and coordination bottlenecks. Craftsmanship in commercial code is rare. Sometimes you get geniuses like John Carmack who writes inspired stuff in code that ships. But most of the time, it's just a bunch of normal people trying to solve a problem under a ton of constraints.