Ask HN: What's the one thing that let you grow the most as a developer?
The freedom to try stuff.<p>I started my "real" development career (I'd played around a little before then) while employed as an Admin Assistant at a company that used an Excel spreadsheet to track work coming in and out. Every task had to be repeated 4 or 5 times, as the company needed different views for different managers. Oh, and of course, only one person could use the spreadsheet at a time.<p>After a few months of typing this in over and over I got sick of it, and fired up Access. In the spare time I had here and there I put together a database everyone could use at once, input once, then open up appropriate views for different managers. I did a lot of this with the Access visual query creator tool. My manager was blown away when he saw it and gave me permission to keep building the feature set out - I'll be forever thankful for that, because many in the company resisted.<p>I added and added to that database, learning VBA for the more advanced stuff, until Access became too limiting (I honestly can't remember why now). We didn't have admin access on our machines so I couldn't install Visual Studio Express, but I could install SharpDevelop. So I did, and created an alternative front-end in VB.NET using the same Access database, eventually graduating to SQL Server (again, I forget why, but I think regular backups were one particular reason. I remember a phone call with a very confused rep from our outsourced IT provider wondering why an Admin Assistant wanted a SQL Server database).<p>Nowadays I work in Node, create iOS apps, all sorts - I've left that original environment far behind. But I wouldn't be anywhere near where I am today without those sandbox environments that let me learn and grow very quickly. People are quick to dismiss Access, VBA and all that, but they shouldn't be.