As professional developers we are usually in a business context and our purpose is not to be artists, to create, we are there to provide the reliable building blocks out of which actual creation can arise.

The focus here is “reliable”. Let the creative guys mess around, we should focus on keeping stuff clean. If we start becoming messy that’s no good, because it’s all downhill from there. How can you draw skulls, no matter how messy, if the drawing functions don’t work?

Using this article’s story, we are the ones creating the drawing functions, not the “skulls”. We make sure those guys that actually see the skulls can do whatever it is they do. We are bad at that, so when we are asked to be creative we arrive at what the author describes: few lines, something simple, something algorithmic.

That’s not because you are all about cleanliness.. you just lack creativity and vision and an artist’s drive to make it reality. And that’s OK.