I see what you're saying, sure, it's an good point about craft and creativity. The essence of any art or craft lies in the actual doing - in the painting, sculpting, writing, throwing pots, or baking bread - not in endlessly optimizing the tools or workspace. It's easy to get caught up in perfecting the setup as a form of procrastination or because it feels safer than actually creating. The real work happens when you pick up the brush, the chisel, the pen, or get your hands in the clay or dough. The tools matter far less than the practice itself.

But, at the same time, sometimes, and quite often, working on tools IS the craft itself.

Building, configuring and improving programming tools is literally programming - you're writing code, solving problems, thinking about abstractions and interfaces. Every script you write, every editor configuration you tweak, every workflow you automate exercises the same skills you use in your "real" work. Understanding how tools work (and building your own) deepens your understanding of systems, APIs, and software design.

So, in essence, working on your tooling could actually make a better programmer out of you. In fact, many great, well-known programmers do actively work and maintain their tools.