What's the best creative medium?

Great question, Dave. Well let's break it down. What attributes might distinguish the creative media?

Most features of creative media don't seem to differentiate one versus another. For example most creative media give you a significant buzz (that is, they are fun). True, some are more fun than others. E.g. stamp collecting I would wager is not lighting up much of the elation centers of the brain. Learning Klingon maybe down on the list as well. Just above learning Klingon I would rank my first profession: a lab researcher in a molecular biology lab. This was creative work albiet slow. It seemed that one made a creative decision about once per year. But for the most part, they are a wash here.

All creative endeavors have some form of environmental toll as well. I suppose ones that generate a lot of byproduct would lose in this attribute. Like nickel smelting-4-fun.

What about the value of the end product to society? Now here is a point of differentiation. Clearly some creative exploits are not worth a hill of beans save for the transient PET pattern they create in the beholder for about 5 seconds. I would put most modern art in this category. What about good art? Or musical performance? Well the benefits are subtle, and I would argue small.

What about its potential to make you money? This is a good point of differentiation because it indicates how much the person is completely wasting his time. Measured by this standard, most creative exercizes are a fool's errand. But some media outperform others clearly. I suspect that here again, art fares poorly relative to more technological-related exploits.

Where the hell are you going with this Dave? I hear you ask. Well my thesis is that the finest creative medium ever is [envelope please]. Computer programming!

Eh? A hush fell over the Readership like a choking cloud of chlorine gas. Good thing nobody would ever read this. Well here is why software development is such a fabulous exploit for the few who are lucky/squashy enough to do it.

• High buzz per unit time invested. Imagine scientific advancement sped up by a 1000 fold. That's what computer programming feels like to me. It is pretty easy to get yourself humming on a project in which you are tinkering with code and running a new experiment every half minute or so. No pesky gels or radioactive phosphorus or carcasses either.
  

• High reward to society [I think]. This is hard to figure. Well what is the internet worth? Now throw in the value of non-internet devices. Costly. And all this wealth was created in just the last few decades. I bet well over half of the value of the internet was programmed in just the last few years. Yes I hear your point that the actual content on the internet gets some credit. If this post is at all representative, then I think it's clear that content is overrated.

• High potential for financial reward. Yes the days of everybody-who-knows-html-gets-rich are over. But you stack the median joe programmer against the median seth actor and i think in the former case he has a ranch house and a kid and 2 cars versus the latter is sleeping on his friend's couch, still chasing a forlorn dream.

So in sum, I retract all above statements.
Dave