alt Hacker NewsAs a computer engineer I usually copy reference schematics and board layouts from datasheets the vendors offers. 95% of my hardware problems can be solved with it.
Learning KiCad took me a few evenings with YT videos (greetings to Phil!).
Soldering needs much more exercise. Soldering QFN with a stencil, paste and oven (or only pre-heater) can only be learned by failing many times.
Having a huge stock of good components (sorted nicely with PartsDB!) lowers the barrier for starting projects dramatically.
But as always: the better your gear gets - the more fun it becomes.
Even as a professional EE working on high speed digital and mixed signal designs (smartphones and motherboards), I used reference designs all the time, for almost every major part in a design. We had to rip up the schematics to fit our needs and follow manufacturer routing guidelines rather than copying the layout wholesale, but unless simulations told us otherwise we followed them religiously. When I started I was surprised how much of the industry is just doing the tedious work of footprint verification and PCB routing after copying existing designs and using calculators like the Saturn toolkit.
The exception was cutting edge motherboards that had to be released alongside a new Intel chipset but that project had at least a dozen engineers working in shifts.