I have this tendency to want audio programming projects to work with all synths and no samples. Besides being "pure" and lightweight, you can potentially come up with sounds no one has ever heard. If you don't really know what you're doing though, you tend to end up with sounds that sound "fake" without being compelling. That's partly why I have this huge psychoacoustics book that I've read 5% of.
I ended up doing something with samples and detuning, which is sort of a compromise between the two. I'm frankly grateful that I have anything at all that sounds OK to me, regardless of synthness.