"Which is that programmers naturally want to build perfect tools while the business need tends to be for a quick and dirty solution that can be assembled out of prebuilt pieces"

I spent quite a few years trying to balance different kinds of speed in "quick and dirty solutions" - speed of writing, speed of execution, speed of understanding...and the risk of failure. To me, that's infinitely more interesting and enjoyable than an unconstrained environment or just one dimension of optimization.