When I fall into this line of thinking, I sometimes realize that the efforts I spent building my own thing from the ground up gave me a lot of insight into how

When I fall into this line of thinking, I sometimes realize that the efforts I spent building my own thing from the ground up gave me a lot of insight into how the thing worked, what tradeoffs existed at a lower level, and it was extremely beneficial to have spent that time, whether I use what I wrote or dump it for a packaged solution. Do you think you were able to analyze your choices better, or understand the systems better, use them better, have more insight, because you spent time up front doing your own thing? I rarely (if ever) feel like time I spent that way was wasted.