> I have a love-hate relationship with the advice "Don’t reinvent solutions to common problems."
Yes: it's difficult for me to reconcile this with the next piece of advice: "Don't Ignore the Math".
If you haven't understood the common problems well enough to code your own solutions, it seems to me that you wouldn't have a secure enough understanding of the math to make any valuable improvements.
When experts give advice, they often forget how little most people know. Contradictory advice probably means they know which cases it applies in, and it should be obvious if you know what you are doing.
Ultimately, most of the advice will boil down to "be an expert". I guess that's what you're in for when you read a five point blog post on something which is really quite advanced.
Yes: it's difficult for me to reconcile this with the next piece of advice: "Don't Ignore the Math".
If you haven't understood the common problems well enough to code your own solutions, it seems to me that you wouldn't have a secure enough understanding of the math to make any valuable improvements.