Most software development best practices and tools are designed for corporate programmers/teams to ensure predictable results. This makes programming boring.

Software doesn't have to be written the way they write it.

For inspiration, study Arthur Whitney, Chuck Moore, Niklaus Wirth, Stephen Bourne, Jeremy Howard, D. Richard Hipp, Dan Bernstein, Terry Davis.

@dchest
Thanks for the authors list! Any notable paper/book from each/some of them you'd recommend reading?
@magnetic_tape I recommend reading any code written by them