If you think of programming as an "art", then you could consider yourself an "artist".

If you try to make a living as an "artist" (in whatever art), you're always balancing between doing the things you like, and doing the things your clients ask you to make.

A case in point: I've written a lot of thread related modules. Why? Because when 5.8.0 was about to come out in the late spring of 2002, there was nobody really testing it as a "user". And I found a lot of things missing. And I had a lot of time on my hands. And I found it intriguing.

However, I'm not using threads in _any_ production environment myself and not for _any_ client to this day. The same for my forks module (although I must admit I will probably start using that in production for a client before the end of the month).

So in my case, you could say I made up a problem for myself and tried to solve it. And I learned a lot of things along the way. Probably more than when if It had been constrained by prerequisites of a project of a client.

Liz