As the old quote goes - "if you are typing "AES" into your code at any point, and you are not a world-renowned crypto expert - you will get this wrong, guaranteed".
There are so few cases of people who are not seasoned crypto engineers getting everything 100% correct that it's basically a myth, and in crypto, getting things "almost right" is the same as getting them wrong...
I too loved playing with crypto - read a ton of books, attended some crypto classes in University, implemented some crypto systems which I thought were secure, etc. - but nowadays I wouldn't dare use anything that isn't considered secure by a large audience unless I had extremely good reason to do so.
I too loved playing with crypto - read a ton of books, attended some crypto classes in University, implemented some crypto systems which I thought were secure, etc. - but nowadays I wouldn't dare use anything that isn't considered secure by a large audience unless I had extremely good reason to do so.