This is a correct view point to have.

As you get to the downswing of your career, you should have already worked and made enough mistakes to have most of your experience. You must cruise on that experience when you are older.

When you are old, that is not the time to work and make mistakes.

That is, most of the heavy work must be done as early as you can. Eat that frog.

I agree. When new programmers come from uni they sometimes barely did any programming. So at some time in their life they got to actually put in the time and learn how to be a competent developer. It is obviously great if you can do it on somebody else dime in a 9 to 5 but if you can’t get that you should just put in the time and learn. In the end you can at best get paid for the value you can create and if you are incompetent that is not going to be a lot