For me, the most valuable insight has been to understand the problem at hand with its intrinsic complexity, constraints and requirements. Only then can you construct efficient and clear abstractions with as little accidental complexity as possible.
Sometimes this can mean writing a very small amount of glue code calling external libraries. Sometimes it can mean avoiding a library/framework and rolling your own solution which solves a specific subset of the problem, enabling a smaller footprint and less dependencies. No silver bullet, really.
Sometimes this can mean writing a very small amount of glue code calling external libraries. Sometimes it can mean avoiding a library/framework and rolling your own solution which solves a specific subset of the problem, enabling a smaller footprint and less dependencies. No silver bullet, really.