Spent 6 months writing code that was way too complicated before I figured it out

I had this project for a little weather app I was building, and I kept adding more and more layers to the code. Thought I was being clever by making everything super flexible and future proof. Then my buddy looked at it and said, "Why do you have 8 different functions just to check if it's raining?" At first I got defensive, but then I actually looked at what my code did versus what it needed to do. Turns out 90% of what I wrote was just me showing off, not solving the actual problem. The fix was deleting half my code and starting over with simple if statements. It was embarrassing but honestly the best lesson I've had so far in this whole coding journey. Has anyone else caught themselves overcomplicating a simple thing and had to walk it back?

2 comments

2 Comments

luna_kim4014h ago

@emery_taylor nailed it about unused features. I think the real trap is trying to look smart for other coders instead of just making stuff work. When I rewrote that weather app I ditched all the fancy patterns and just used a single function with nested ifs. It was ugly but it worked and took like 5 minutes to debug later. Code that impresses people at meetups usually sucks to maintain.

emery_taylor16h ago

You thought you were being clever by making everything super flexible and future proof" - yep, been there. Read somewhere that most of the features we build never get used anyway. Just wasted effort.