Honestly, I found after growing up programming with lots of restrictions, I developed lots of bad habits. I slowly developed a closed mind for "newfangled libraries," IDEs, and similar. I didn't learn to value computationally expensive things like internal consistency checks or logging. Eventually, and in part thanks to reading HN, I stepped out of that mindset of scarcity. Instead of trying to do things with limited resources, I now find it more worthwhile to find what resources exist and leverage them.

Also, maybe creativity isn't the same as being a good programmer. Creativity may get you out of a bind or into a new area, but I think being a good programmer is founded on many mundane characteristics, such as consistency and ability to conform to others.