Dev Sessions: Revisiting Projects I Built 15 Years Ago
- Platform DesignPlatform DesignI design systems that scale. whether it’s project tools, internal platforms, or customer-facing apps. Clean design and clear logic included.Learn More View Articles
- Website DesignWebsite DesignI build websites that do more than look good. They’re fast, intuitive, and designed to connect with your users.Learn More View Articles
- Website DevelopmentWebsite DevelopmentI build websites for growth. Tailored design. Solid development. Built to help you move forward.Learn More View Articles
Backups & Old Projects
If you opened my old file backups, you’d find a different version of me tucked away in folders with names I no longer recognize.
They’re like old photographs, blurred at the edges—half-built websites, landing pages that went nowhere, applications with unfinished logic.
The projects sit waiting, untouched for years – maybe hoping never to get deleted. Recently, I dared myself to look back, to sift through code I had written when my developer skills were less certain, and i was ambitious as to what i could design & build.
Opening old projects felt like stumbling upon letters written by someone else, a much more uncertain developer. The code was raw and messy. Tables nested within tables like stories layered upon stories, styles scattered directly into HTML, tangled like threads in a drawer.
Much code written before the arrival of frameworks like Bootstrap. My JavaScript was crowded, heavy with if statements, and loops, tightly interwoven in a way that now makes me pause and reflect on how modern loops such as map or Set.
Back then, making a contact form work felt like magic. Validation was written out by hand and it was clunky, repetitive, and stubborn. Today, I would (We all would!) lean into frameworks, neatly dividing everything into programming understood by most.
But in those early days of development, I wrote code the way you build something without instructions, hoping the pieces would somehow fall into place; spending hours debugging, correcting and analyzing.
The CSS was another kind of story. One large sprawling file, no clear naming, just class after class jumbled together. Inline styles littered HTML documents, notes scribbled hastily in the margins. Today, I pause longer, planning carefully, using structured methodologies and patterns, embracing clarity as an essential kindness to my future self. But then, clarity wasn’t the priority—only the immediate thrill of seeing something appear on the screen.
The only way to lazy load was JS.
I remember finding an early attempt at lazy-loading images—a messy workaround that barely held together, relying on a delicate balance of onload triggers, fragile… Nowadays, this is effortless, a single attribute or a trusted library doing all the lifting. But there’s warmth in recalling how I once scrambled to make it work, piecing together small victories.
Even documentation was sparse, cryptic notes left behind, comments reading “// fix later” or “// check tomorrow.” They were messages from a younger me, hesitant yet determined, trying hard to push through confusion and uncertainty. Over time, I’ve learned to appreciate clear annotations and meaningful naming conventions, small courtesies offered by my current self to future versions of me.
Relive your old projects
Revisiting these old projects felt like seeing an old friend after years apart, familiar yet distant. It’s easy now to smile, to recognize flaws without judgment, to feel pride in how far I’ve come. These early attempts are not failures, just steps along a journey, each clumsy piece of code evidence of my persistence and growth.
I encourage other developers to revisit their past projects—not just to see how much they’ve improved technically, but to honor the messy process of learning. Those folders, filled with outdated methods and imperfect logic, remind me of who I was then: eager, unsure, full of ideas. They whisper quietly, proof that every awkward step was necessary, leading me steadily to the clearer, stronger code I write today.
The summary? Keep on programming, creating, imagining. You’ll only get better by consistency.