Rant: Hit 5000 lines of code on my first real project and it terrified me more than I expected

Everyone talks about hitting big numbers like it's some huge achievement, but I just passed 5000 lines on my first real project and honestly it freaked me out. It's a simple weather app I've been building over the last 3 months, nothing fancy. But seeing that count climb made me realize how easy it is to write bad code without noticing. I've got like 3 functions that do almost the same thing and a bunch of comments I'm embarrassed to even read again. People online always say to focus on clean code from the start, but I thought I had it under control. Now I'm staring at this mess and wondering if I should just scrap it and start over. Has anyone else felt this way when their project got bigger than expected?

2 comments

2 Comments

drew_park29d ago

The part about "3 functions that do almost the same thing" really jumped out at me. I actually think that's totally normal for a first real project, not a sign you messed up. Learning to see that kind of repetition is the whole point of building something substantial, and you wouldn't have spotted it without writing those 5000 lines first.

mark_thomas29d ago

Buddy of mine built his whole app around one function that did everything, then spent a month untangling it.