> A belief in the understandability of software systems can very easily become a need to understand the systems you work with. I relate to this point especiall

> A belief in the understandability of software systems can very easily become a need to understand the systems you work with. I relate to this point especially, as this is how I often am as well. I do a lot of work with FPGAs and embedded systems, and the tools offered by the vendors in this space are often huge and complex in an attempt to create an easy "happy path" for hardware engineers who don't want to/can't learn software engineering and just want to get something working. I, however, stubbornly chose to eschew these tools in favor of "doing it from scratch". In the end I think it was 100% worth it as this process deepened my understanding of the field and has left me with some valuable skills, but the end result was that it took me weeks to do something that another colleague could have done in a day or two, maybe less. I understand the underlying system and implementation better, but that may or may not be considered valuable depending on the project and your company's culture.