And if he would, he just wouldn't be taken seriously as a painter. In the world of computers just about everything is much more easily achievable in ways of art by letting a mechanical process do it for you. That also brings me back to the rest of the scene. The reason why the focus is so much on the individual graphics artists is that they are incredibly easy to keep track of. Perhaps the focus should be on the entire scene instead of the artists alone.
Many coders take shitloads of info and source code from books written on the subject.
I mean, go to any bookstore and you can find shelves full of books on how to code specific routines. Even your basic phong shading routine can be found in there. And what about the issue of source code ripping. How many times have we seen a demo display a wicked and highly original new effect. So original that it was incredibly difficult to even conceive.