I think the author is taking the wrong thing away from this, all those little realisations are things that if he comes across in the future he will have a bette

I think the author is taking the wrong thing away from this, all those little realisations are things that if he comes across in the future he will have a better understanding of what to do. In other words rather than become embarrassed after realising a months work boiled down to just a few lines think about how much you learned to get to those few lines.