My first GitHub repo went from 3 pages of trash to 20 clean commits in 6 weeks

I started learning Python back in January and my first project was a mess. I had one giant file with no comments and variable names like 'x' and 'thingy'. After about 6 weeks of watching some YouTube tutorials and reading through r/learnprogramming posts, I went back to that same project. I broke it into 5 separate functions, added docstrings, used meaningful names like 'user_score' instead of 's', and wrote a proper README. The main thing that changed was stopping to plan before I typed. I drew a little flowchart on paper first. Now when I look at the old version it feels like a different person wrote it. Has anyone else gone back to their first project and felt embarrassed at how bad it was?

2 comments

2 Comments

foster.wade17d ago

Yeah but did you actually start doing the flowchart thing for every new project after that or was it just a one time lesson?

spencer_johnson2217d ago

oh man, definitely not just a one time thing. I still pull up a whiteboard or scratch paper for pretty much any new project before I even start coding.