The most inspiring talk I've ever heard was Richard Gabriel talking about that writing software is similar to writing poems. Poets often use a lot of effort to get few words just right - think Haikus - and we should strive towards the same kind of excellence when writing software.
Elegance and concisiveness (spelling?) is as important in programming as in poetry and math, and it requires a lot of effort to do so fluently.
See some of the points on http://www.dreamsongs.com/PoetryOfProgramming.html