One of the most underrated skills in software development is knowing when not to write code. How We Reduced Our CI Time by 10000% taught me this lesson the hard way.

What Happened

We spent three sprints building a custom solution for something that already existed as a well-maintained open source library. The "not invented here" syndrome cost us weeks of productivity and introduced bugs we're still fixing.

What I'd Do Differently

Research existing solutions before writing a single line of code
Evaluate libraries by their maintenance activity, not their star count
Prototype with the library first — you can always replace it later
Accept that someone else's code being "not perfect" is still better than your unwritten code

The best code is the code you didn't have to write, debug, or maintain. Leverage is everything.