＞Don't be afraid to change tack completely or give up on things. The most important thing I learned during my PhD (though too late) was how important disproving

＞Don't be afraid to change tack completely or give up on things. The most important thing I learned during my PhD (though too late) was how important disproving and discarding ideas quickly is. Yes, I think this is extremely important. Although I haven't experienced the "positive" of this yet, I've definitely experienced the opposite where I spent way too much time then I should on a problem that wasn't even that well defined in the first place. I suspect (because I've so far only experienced what doesn't work) that quick experimentation and iteration on your chosen idea and topic is very important. Otherwise you just keep digging a hole that gets harder and harder to get out of. Not sure why your question is focus on tooling though, I doubt that would really be your biggest problem