You want to be a cog wheel, in a company of cog wheels. There's nothing wrong with that. But I want to be an artist, and preferably in a company of artists, having been in a company of cog wheels too many times. Not only it's more fun that way, but also tends to lead to better outcomes.

That's an uncharitable take and I urge you to reconsider. I also take great joy and pride in the art of writing beautiful code. I have no desire to be a cog in a machine. However, my ADHD brain is delighted to not have to make a million little distracting decisions in place of the code planning I should be doing. Formatters let me concentrate on writing the best data structures and APIs and algorithms instead of how many spaces to put before comment markers or while kind of quote mark is more aesthetically pleasing in this particular file.

I, too, want to be an artist. For me, the flow of data through my work is the artistry, not the typography of the code.

The beauty of it is that all artists can be different. It's the cog wheels that need to be identical.

I genuinely think you're on the wrong track there. Someone can express their artistry different from your ways and still take pride in their artistry.

Wowsers. As what I think is a fellow traveler, I would encourage you to look back at all the places you created art and ask how many friends you made at each stop.

Please don't turn this site into Reddit.

Not quite sure I follow but please do edify me.