I Rewrote My First Python Project After 5 Years. Here’s What Shocked Me

I thought I was just cleaning up old code — I wasn’t ready for the truth it would reveal.

I Rewrote My First Python Project After 5 Years. Here’s What Shocked Me

It started as a casual refactor. What I found was a brutal reminder of how far I’d come — and how little I once knew. Here are the biggest lessons from my 5-year-old Python time capsule.

Rewriting your own code from five years ago is a bit like reading your high school diary — painful, cringeworthy, and oddly nostalgic.

I recently cracked open the very first Python project I ever built: a CLI-based task manager written in a weekend, fueled by too much coffee and Stack Overflow copy-pasting. I was curious to see how far I’d come, but what I didn’t expect was the mix of horror, pride, and realization that followed.

Here’s what shocked me the most — and what every developer can learn from looking back.

1. My Code Worked… But It Was a Mess

I expected broken scripts and uncaught exceptions. But to my surprise, the program actually ran.

The catch? It was an unmaintainable, tangled mess.

• Variable names like temp, x, and data were everywhere.
• Functions spanned 50+ lines with zero documentation.
• Business logic, CLI output, and file I/O were all jammed together.

def add_task(x):  # What is x? Who knows. 
    f = open("tasks.txt", "a") 
    f.write(x + "\n") 
    f.close() 
    print("Task added!")

When you’re just starting, making it work feels like a win. But as your skills grow, you realize that maintainability is what separates amateur scripts from professional software.

2. I Was Terrified of Abstractions

Looking back, I avoided functions, classes, or modules unless absolutely necessary.

Instead of breaking things into reusable pieces, I wrote long procedural scripts — likely because I didn’t fully understand how to structure code for reuse.

There was no separation of concerns. Everything was in one file, and everything was tightly coupled.

# All logic dumped in a single script 
task = input("Enter task: ") 
with open("tasks.txt", "a") as f: 
    f.write(task + "\n") 
print("Task added!")

Your fear of abstraction limits your scalability. Today, I design systems with separation in mind — models, services, utilities. Back then, I couldn’t even spell “architecture.”

3. I Reinvented the Wheel… A Lot

In my early Python days, I had no idea how rich the ecosystem was. I wrote custom parsers, string formatters, even date handling logic — all from scratch.

Things that could’ve been solved with a one-liner using the datetime, argparse, or pathlib modules were written by hand.

# A manual attempt to get today’s date 
import time 
today = time.strftime("%d-%m-%Y")  # Could’ve just used datetime.today()

One of Python’s biggest strengths is its batteries-included standard library. Learning to leverage existing tools is a sign of maturity — you’re building smarter, not harder.

4. Tests? Never Heard of Them.

My first project had zero tests.

It was a classic case of “it works on my machine” development. If something broke, I’d manually re-run the script with different inputs. That was my testing strategy.

Today, I can’t imagine shipping anything without at least basic unit tests. The rewritten version uses pytest, includes edge cases, and even mocks file operations.

def test_add_task(tmp_path): 
    task_file = tmp_path / "tasks.txt" 
    add_task("Buy milk", task_file) 
    assert task_file.read_text().strip() == "Buy milk"

Tests aren’t just for teams or big projects — they’re a mindset. They make you think defensively and write better code by default.

5. I Didn’t Know What I Didn’t Know

Reading my old code, I saw decisions that made no sense. But back then, I didn’t know what questions to ask.

• I didn’t understand code style or formatting.
• I didn’t think about edge cases or user input validation.
• I didn’t care about scalability, performance, or error handling.

And that’s okay — because everyone starts somewhere.

Beginner code is supposed to be messy. It’s not a failure; it’s a fossil record of progress. And the fact that I can now see the flaws means I’ve grown.

6. The Rewrite Took Less Time — and Was 10x Better

The original project took me a weekend. The rewrite? Just a few hours.

Using modern Python features like dataclasses, Path, and CLI frameworks like Typer, I was able to build something far more powerful — in less code, with better structure.

Here’s a taste of what the new version looks like:

from pathlib import Path 
from typer import Typer 
 
app = Typer() 
TASKS_FILE = Path("tasks.txt") 
 
@app.command() 
def add(task: str): 
    TASKS_FILE.write_text(TASKS_FILE.read_text() + task + "\n") 
    print("Task added!") 
 
if __name__ == "__main__": 
    app()

Writing clean, idiomatic code is a superpower that comes with experience. The difference between my old and new code wasn’t just syntax — it was clarity of thought.

Final Thoughts: Revisiting Old Code Is a Developer’s Rite of Passage

If you’ve never revisited your first project, I highly recommend it. Not to laugh at it (though you will), but to appreciate how far you’ve come.

Rewriting my project reminded me of:

• How messy learning is.
• How important fundamentals are.
• How powerful modern Python has become.
• And most importantly — that growth often happens quietly, one line at a time.

So dig up that old repo. Dust off those ancient .py files. Rewrite them. Refactor them. Reflect.
You’ll come out of it a better, more grateful developer.

If you’ve ever revisited your early code, I’d love to hear what you found. Drop a comment or share your favorite cringe moment — let’s normalize the journey.