Every answer here are super good and I agree with most of them. What I would add is: Try to find a way to make it easy to test a lot of things, for example, ge

Every answer here are super good and I agree with most of them. What I would add is: Try to find a way to make it easy to test a lot of things, for example, get yourself a good environment to do kernel development with automatic virtualization, automatic setup of debuggers, automatic generation of initramfs based on what you want to do, etc. So that you can focus on a write-build-test cycle ; this way you minimize cognitive load. To summary, automation & environment setup matters.