Some things get called 'acquired tastes', inaccurately. They should be called 'earned tastes', because you have to put in the work to learn them.
The art behind any earned taste consists of repetition and variation.
For many years, I thought of the work of Claude Monet as cheesy. The impressionist version of Thomas Kincade. No doubt largely due to the use of "Water Lilies" in every other Dentist's waiting room, the freebie calendars businesses hand out at year's end, and so on.
To start to understand Monet's genius, you need to see one of the water lilies in person. He created them at epic scale: six feet tall and 42 feet wide. If you stand dead center at arms length, it fills up your entire field of vision. Like the 19th century version of a VR headset or curved gaming monitor, it is immersive.
Part of it is some artists – David Bowie, Hendrix, Miles, some artists you can't deny their talents even if you don't like their style. Monet's talent, his mastery of the craft, is absolutely undeniable. Part of it is convetionally romantic – his palette of summer sunset, purple, pink and green. Part of it is sheer numbers – he painted 250 different angles of the garden at these massive sizes.
But always at sunset, in the same colors. In his Cathedral series, he switched the restriction, and created transcendant art.
In 1892 Monet rented a space facing the west facade of Rouen Cathedral. Over two years, he painted the subject about 30 times. The exact same subject from the same angle, but at different times of day, different times of year. On a muggy summer's night, and a crystal winter morning.
Monet intended through this innovative restriction to capture the essence of light itself. Through repetition, the similarity fades, and what's left is the difference. To do this he employs super modernist technique: following the contours of the cathedral, he builds up paint so thick it makes a sculpture standing off the canvas, so tall it actually casts a tiny shadow on the flat paint behind it.
Blues music has several similarities, which make it an "earned taste".
All blues incorporates some restriction. Sometimes it's a limitation of the instrument, or the performer. Sometimes the performer and their instrument are hyper-capable, the artistry is limited instead by the form. But there's always a limitation (blues without limitations becomes jazz).
Learning how to listen to blues depends on repetition. One excellent method: go through the common standards – "Rollin' And Tumblin'", "Dust My Broom" – and listen to versions by various artists. The similarity fades, and what's left is the difference. You'll start to feel the personality of each artist emerging from the material.
The layers of paint Monet built as if sculpting were avant-garde and controversial at the time. Likewise, blues music often has a barrier learners need to overcome in the aesthetics of its production. Early blues got recorded on early equipment, the sound quality is often terrible by modern standards. And recording conventions were less formal. A performer might give a little spoken word intro before starting a song, or maybe stop mid-song to address a thought. Tuning is not standard.
Programming is an art which requires an earned taste. You largely do the same thing over and over again, that's the practice. Every time, you do something a little different, that's the variation.
You're trying to separate the similar from the different. Computers are hella good at doing the similar, so the better you can identify the different, the better your program.
But every time you try one thing, you reject all the others.
Innovation comes from restriction.