I think the literal most important thing I've learned working in computers is to appreciate best practices, off the shelf code, and a militant avoidance of the

I think the literal most important thing I've learned working in computers is to appreciate best practices, off the shelf code, and a militant avoidance of the new, the creative, and the elegant, unless of course it's a new industry standard. Anyone can learn them in a week, unfortunately it seems to take years to actually appreciate the value. Some people seem to have an amazing ability to innovate. I can't confidently say I've built anything interesting or innovative in the last decade and actually benefitted from it. I'm not even fully sure that I learned anything useful in all my early years of random toy projects. I think I learned more in six months of working with people who have background in enterprisy, by the book stuff than in years of making my own crappy language and editor, designing network protocols, and such.