I finally admitted my first big project failure was because I skipped planning

I spent 3 hours building a simple login page in my bedroom, only to realize I forgot to set up a database connection, and I had to scrap everything and start over from scratch - has anyone else hit a wall because they jumped into coding without mapping out the logic first?

3 comments

3 Comments

ray3632mo ago

Three hours on a login page with no database? Man, that is a brutal way to learn that lesson.

the_joel2mo ago

Ugh, yep, I used to be one of those people who thought "how hard can a login be?" and would just slap it together in like 20 minutes. I figured if the data wasn't stored anywhere, you could just fake it with JavaScript and call it a day. Then I actually had to build one for a client who wanted to test user flows before the backend was ready. Three hours of constantly refreshing, checking the console, and realizing I made the same password check logic error five different ways before I got it to actually work. It really made me respect how much small stuff can trip you up when you don't plan it out first.

keith_rodriguez2mo ago

You ever spend three hours debugging something just to realize you were checking the wrong variable the whole time? Makes you wonder if we're all just guessing until something finally sticks, right?