[prewett]

> [highly trained musicians in orchestras spend all their time playing pieces they didn't write]

That's an interesting point, but if you got into programming via working on your own projects, the musical analogy is "I loved play jazz saxophone with my cool cats, but every paid gig I get just wants me to play note-for-note Duke Ellington transcriptions." The essence of jazz is improv, but playing classical music is more about playing/experiencing beautiful music which I am probably lack the capacity to write myself. (Not saying classical is better than jazz or vice-versa, you just go into them for very different reasons.)

But the analogy is kind of interesting, since there might be jobs for which the outcome (e.g. beautiful music) is so compelling that I will happily take their directions. I got in software to do jazz, and would be willing to do pre-scripted beauty, but unfortunately, most software jobs are not either of those.