The best coding advice from my mentor at 27 changed my career. Learn the fundamental principle that makes developers truly successful.
I was a fresh techie trying to up my game in software development and needed new solutions every other time I faced an issue, driven by the same passion. However, similar to what most beginners (fingers crossed) have experienced—I made a ton of mistakes: reinventing the wheel with pre-solved problems; shying away from existing libraries and massively underestimating the importance of community knowledge.
The abundance of open-source projects, frameworks, and pre-built modules that I dived into. I integrated them into my work, which helped me to save a great amount of time, too, besides improving the reliability and scalability of the applications. This approach enabled me to work on its innovation where it truly mattered, extending my capabilities and career.