Selling Out: The Road to Happiness

So, after a few years of including in my CV that I had written the CMS that runs resplect.com myself, I have sold out and installed Drupal. Why? Well there's at least 3 good reasons:

1. I've learned what I need to. I've proven I'm capable of writing a very effective CMS from scratch.
2. Maintaining software takes time. Problems I'll happily put up with in a canned solution like Drupal, Joomla, etc. are things that would keep me up at night if I'd written it myself. I need the time to have a life outside of code.
3. It's better. Seriously, with stuff as good as Drupal and Joomla out there, my homebrew CMS was never going to be as good of a solution, however much time I put into it.

As I reflect, the first reason, that I've learned what I need to, applies to just this project. But the other two apply to many projects that I have not yet undertaken, but have mused about in my mind. And as I turn this over in my head, I wonder about several questions:

• How do I make good money as a computer science graduate long-term?
• How do I keep myself from getting so absorbed in writing good code that I don't find time for more important things? Obviously there's a girl in the picture ;)
• How do I ensure that I'm always working with reliable, well-written software?

The answer to the first two I think may be to sell out more often. Sell out and get the Oracle, Microsoft or Apple certifications. Sell out and install stuff like Drupal instead of writing my own CMS. But the answer to the third still has to be - go Open Source all the way. So with that I declare my intention to do something CV worthy to help out the Drupal project, as part of a hopefully long career of selling out instead of going it alone.