WordPress is my example, but the question can be generalized to any technology that is not particularly interesting.
To me, WordPress takes away the intellectually gratifying pieces of coding. I would rather write a new version of WordPress than write a WordPress theme and glue together some plugins. I am using WP because my company dictates the platform for some of our clients (I do not disagree with the choice from a business perspective, WP is quick and cheap to implement).
My question is, how can I make my next WordPress project interesting?
I want to advance my understanding of the fundamentals of programming (aka data structures, algorithms, and caching) but do not see how I can achieve this when coding another WP site.
I have a fairly tight understanding of front-end technologies and believe I have made WP do things it was never intended to do. Examples are here and here. Solving front-end related problems is not as interesting as coding a full stack application.
Any advice will help.