I didn’t quite mean to make this a “top 10” list, but it did work out to 10 items, and it’s indeed a list.

UPDATE: I didn’t make a few points clear originally, so let me add some context here.

The impetus for writing this post was of 3 weekend projects that never got off the ground because I got bogged down with the setup. I was familiar with the framework I was using, it gave me all the tools I needed to get the project going, and as I started building my functionality I started realizing I needed X, Y and Z to keep going. So I grabbed packages (some I was familiar with, others less so, but all were modular and would fit right in with the framework I was using) and spent a bunch more time getting them connected and playing nice with each other, realizing I…