If you were a college professor, you would generally spend most of your time reading, researching, and _synthesizing_ learning into digestible information for others. Your ability to do new and groundbreaking things would be based partially on the mastery of a discipline and partially on the ability to be constantly exposed to and challenged by new ideas.

I don't think programmers are more like professors than artists, or vice versa. These are just two different modalities applicable within the large, varied landscape that is computer engineering.