I'm Power Platform architect, I have been working with Dynamics for more than 10 years. Your post feels more like you were thrown on a project where you didn't know the stack.
I've seen those projects where I'm brought in to fix some internal project gone wrong because they took internal softdev with no knowledge of a platform that exist for more than 15 years.
Meanwhile, I shipped whole systems in half the time you took to "roll your own".
Just try to roll your own ERP/CRM, we saw plenty of time how that goes.
Ok, so, what should a software dev who hasn’t worked with power platform before look at to get up to speed on the proper way to use it with their own api’s?
I've seen those projects where I'm brought in to fix some internal project gone wrong because they took internal softdev with no knowledge of a platform that exist for more than 15 years.
Meanwhile, I shipped whole systems in half the time you took to "roll your own".
Just try to roll your own ERP/CRM, we saw plenty of time how that goes.