No no, that didn't sound aggressive at all! Though I still wouldn't say the project was trivial, just very limited in scope. And had I done everything perfectly

No no, that didn't sound aggressive at all! Though I still wouldn't say the project was trivial, just very limited in scope. And had I done everything perfectly -- meaning, being able to stream code from my head with no errors -- the project may only have taken 3 hours. That's how small it is. I think the finished product is 800 lines of code, server and client together. It's conceptually very small too. (Maybe this is a 'veteran' skill as well, being able to keep things small.) My point is that a whole 75% of the time I spent on this project was just me flailing around with stuff that wasn't working as I expected (that's relatable at all experience levels!). Perhaps it's true that veterans can get through certain things more quickly than novices can, but we're not immune to the 80/20 rule either! We just get stuck on different types of problems.