I just opened an old side project and let me tell you… it was ugly.

But I wasn’t mad. I wasn’t even embarrassed. I was proud. Because that disaster? That chaos? That’s what growth looks like.

Let me explain.

“Bad” Code Wasn’t Bad. It Was Just... Me.

Back then, I was doing my best with what I knew. That spaghetti mess wasn’t trash, it was my training montage. I didn’t know about abstractions or patterns. I knew “click this, get that.” And honestly, that’s a solid start.

Now, I think about accessibility, reusability, naming, and logic separation, all the things I once used to ignored because I was just trying to make the damn thing work.

If Your Old Code Doesn’t Make You Cringe... That’s A Red Flag

That cringe you feel looking at your old code? That’s not a bug, it’s a feature. It means your brain has updated. If you don’t occasionally look back and go, “who wrote this??”, you probably haven’t grown much. And that’s worse than bad code.

I’m not saying throw shade at your past self. I’m saying respect the journey. Laugh at the mess, learn from it, and move on.

Real Growth Isn’t Pretty, It’s Refactored

I used to write functions inside click handlers. Now I use hooks, move logic into utils, and name things like I actually want future-me to understand them. Beginner me shipped features. Current me ships features without needing a whiteboard to explain them.

Growth doesn’t mean you write perfect code. It means you recognize when your old solutions could be better and you want to fix them.

You’re Supposed to Get Better

That's the deal. If you're still writing the same code you wrote two years ago, something's off. Keep your old projects around. They’re better than any tutorial repo. They’re your resume, your receipts, your story.

You started from chaos. Now you're cleaner, sharper, maybe even a little dangerous.

Conclusion

• Cringey code means progress.
• Your old code wasn’t dumb. It was just early.
• Clean code is rewritten, not born.
• Be proud of the mess, you needed it to get here.