Personally what I enjoy about hobby projects – and I’m just blithely assuming this is one – is that I can be just as much a purist as I want. Sure, it’s often impractical and ends up taking much more time than a straightforward solution would, but if I’m doing it just for me I’d rather make something “beautiful” (for some very subjective definition of the word) than useful. I’ll probably enjoy the process more, and for me the process is at least as important as the end result.