Something in one of Zed Shaw's old talks stuck with me. Roughly:

"Don't go with the flow of the industry. Try [unconventional] things because there's something beneath [software] that we haven't figured out yet."

I suppose there's two personal disclaimers:

- I'm not that interested in the business aspect of software.

- The answer to what the magic beneath is may elude me due to it simply being "math, stupid".