Learning to play an instrument is usually about learning many many tiny discrete skills that build on one another and can be combined in creative ways to express what's most important and vital at that moment.

You can play an instrument knowing just to pluck a single note. But it's a lot more fun to play if you know a ton of different skills: you can say so much more.

I think the same holds true for coding. You can learn more skills all the time, all of which broaden the realm of what you can create when you sit down at a keyboard again (aka the playing the instrument part).

Learning general website building technology is like learning to play an instrument, but being asked to build a given website is like being asked to give a performance. It might be a quick rendition or it might be a major performance on a stage (with one obviously being much more prep time than another).

Yes! We could consider JavaScript, HTML, and CSS as the set of instruments. Then by creating the Conductor framework the author has not only "practiced his instruments", but shown proficiency and created a nice performance.

As for those who wish to use his framework, it's probably not enough to use it alone. It's mostly just another instrument that can be played solo, but to orchestrate some web apps, one will have to include the JavaScript, HTML, CSS and probably a few other "instruments".

Apologies if I strained that analogy too much.

Maybe a coder is more like an improvising Jazz musician. Would explain a few things.

That's what the Rich Hickey talk is all about!

Also, do you know the song(s) already, and do you know how to play the particular instrument requested?

That's a good aspect of the analogy. I can play pretty much anything with strings (not necessarily well, but I can play it), but being able to play a particular song on it is another thing.

Likewise, the programming side of my work is generally pretty trivial (as is the case for probably 99% of most programming that happens in the world). It's the domain knowledge that makes things difficult/interesting/challenging.