Well said. Similar to you, I code now almost exclusively in Flask. I don't want to spend days and night learning (and remembering for interviews) unnecessary ab

Well said. Similar to you, I code now almost exclusively in Flask. I don't want to spend days and night learning (and remembering for interviews) unnecessary abstractions and apis. Instead I prefer to spend more time on CS fundamentals, if I have to. Sad part of this story is broken hiring. Your resume doesn't get short-listed unless it comes with new hyped-shiny-toy. But this can encourage you to put more efforts on finding good employer. Apart from juggling act you mentioned, there is another caveat. Many devs don't understand exact use-cases of these design patterns and use them in wrong context. On foot note, If you don't have good team of engineers similar to OP, best way to craft your art is - - pick up a good library in your subject - start copying it line by line - when copying, try to understand everything - this will teach you lot about designing softwares Even though this sounds like stupid and time consuming, it is not. Believe me. You don't have to even reach 100 %, just try to reach 33 %. You will learn lot by this in short period.