Old School XP Heresy?

I enjoy both old school aesthetics and the very old school mindset of relying on one's own inventiveness, but I am not an idolator and there are certain aspects of the Original Fantasy Adventure Game I have always been more than willing to entertain the notion of tossing into a sphere of annihilation. One such thing is the concept of experience points—how they are gained, how they are calculated, how many are needed for levelling up. I have no use for it. If I were to run the earliest edition of Dungeons & Dragons or return to Swords & Wizardry White Box, I would be strongly tempted to use the experience system from Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG, create my own, or just wing it free-form-style. Anything, to my mind, would be better than the pitiless bean-counting obstacle of fun and adversary of immersion that is the traditional experience point system unless it serves the fictional genre and/or can be referenced in character (such as video games or game shows). It may be heretical to the "rules as written" tribe, but I have always subscribed to the philosophy of necessary rules tinkering: If something doesn't work for you, replace it with something that does. When it hits your table, it's your game. You can craft it to suit the needs of your gaming group. It's the original old school way.