Page 1 of 1

Keeping old projects

Posted: Thu Mar 30, 2006 7:38 pm
by alex.barylski
I am re-organizing my HDD for the first time (it's the second partition on a single drive actually used for backup) and just found an old Windows SDK application I wrote which gets weather details for a given ICAO and display a little thermometer with wind speed, direction, etc...

Basically completely useless :)

But it was a long time ago - I think before I switched to MFC and waaaaay before I started doing anything in PHP or web development (I even did Perl and ASP before switching to PHP)...

Anyways, It's a pretty complete little application which runs in your system tray, like ZoneAlarm, etc...and I was quite proud of it when I originally wrote it

But I'm trying to save room on my thumb drive, where all backed up data is going (My HDD is starting to whine alot at boot up from a cold start).

So I'm stuck with what to do...I'm too lazy to write up an article for a project I worked on almost 10 years ago, so I can't post the code on any web sites...it's written using the Windows SDK API, so it's a poor or antiquated example of my capabilities as a Windows developer...

And all in all it's pretty useless :P

I just dumped about 200 assembly source files and a massive number of VB projects, Pascal, Lisp, COBOL, C, C++/MFC and so on...probably 10,000 files i've saved over the years...are gonzo!!!

I'm a new project maniac...whenever I get an idea I start a project, incase you wondering why I have so many archived files...

Anyways, I managed to seperate with most of my archived code because, although many are cool IMHO, they are to far from being complete to bother saving or I have lost total interst in that area of programming (I dumped alot of C source files for a 3D game library I was working on years back for instance).

But this little weather utility is complete (mostly) and for whatever reason, I can't seem to delete the damn thing despite taking up valuable disk space on my thumb drive.

Someone slap some sense into me and convince me to to collect junk (I have a hard time seperating with anything - I have over 100 books which are sooo out of date they serve no purpose, except maybe nostalgia :) And computer magazines dating back to before I was born :P

Clearly I have a problem getting rid of junk...

Do I sound a little anal? Do you keep Code, books, magazines, software (I still have my MSDOS 4 & 6.22 w/ Windows 3.1 disks), etc...?

I should scrap all code, except those current 6 or 7 projects...shouldn't I? :)

I get this from my dad...you should see the junk he keeps...his house is full of stuff some of which are antiques...like an old sewing machine from like at least beginning of the century...I'm gonna steal it and sell it on eBay I think :P

Cheers :)

Posted: Thu Mar 30, 2006 7:45 pm
by alex.barylski
I did it...I deleted it

I hope I don't regret it :? 8O

Posted: Thu Mar 30, 2006 8:02 pm
by Nathaniel
I love getting rid of junk. It makes me feel free. Or something.

Posted: Thu Mar 30, 2006 8:05 pm
by John Cartwright
Exact reason I'm buying an external 300gb harddrive. :wink:

Posted: Thu Mar 30, 2006 8:15 pm
by alex.barylski
Nathaniel wrote:I love getting rid of junk. It makes me feel free. Or something.
I must admit to feeling somewhat liberated...but slightly regretful...I suppose I could still recover the files...

Bahhh **** it!!! :P

More organized...means more efficient on current events :)

Posted: Thu Mar 30, 2006 8:17 pm
by alex.barylski
Jcart wrote:Exact reason I'm buying an external 300gb harddrive. :wink:
300 GB...holy crap...that'd be nice.. :)

I think my HDD right now is only 30GB

Posted: Thu Mar 30, 2006 9:29 pm
by feyd
I need to get another terabyte soon, getting full on this one.. :|

Posted: Thu Mar 30, 2006 11:46 pm
by alex.barylski
Another TB? What exactly are you storing on your HDD that you need that kind of space??? 8)

RIAA gonna come banging on your door soon? Quick you better move to Canada ;)

Seriously though, do you have a realtime copy of the entire sourceforge directory on your local HDD? :P

Cheers :)

Posted: Thu Mar 30, 2006 11:53 pm
by feyd
  • My graphics and video projects take massive amounts of space.
  • My applications take massive amounts of space.
  • Raw source material takes even more space.
  • Hell, my last "major" (web) project takes up 1700MB.
It adds up very quickly.

My music library doesn't help either.

Posted: Fri Mar 31, 2006 2:49 am
by shiznatix
I like to keep my old projects because if I go to get a new job I can be like 'look how I have progressed'. Seams to be a good thing.

Posted: Fri Mar 31, 2006 3:25 am
by Grim...
I've got a TB in my media PC, and .5 TB in my coding PC.
I don't know how you can survive with 30Gig!
Hockey wrote:300 GB...holy crap...that'd be nice...
320GB for £80. No excuses now :)

Posted: Fri Mar 31, 2006 6:20 am
by Chris Corbyn
I never delete any old code that's actually part of a project, whether it was finished or not ;)

I always end up with loads of files sitting around called things like "foo.php", "testing.cpp", "idea.pl" etc etc that I have to clean up every month or so.

I was devastated when my HDD packed in a couple of months back and I lost my *very first* coding projects (PHP). I'm an idot for not backing up things and in that case I'd actually backed stuff up then deleted the backups to create some space for something stupid. Grr :x

Generally, cleaning up your system and orgainising files is a nice thing to do though :D

Posted: Fri Mar 31, 2006 6:37 am
by Grim...
Like cleaning your desk / house :)

Posted: Fri Mar 31, 2006 10:46 am
by alex.barylski
d11wtq wrote:I never delete any old code that's actually part of a project, whether it was finished or not ;)

I always end up with loads of files sitting around called things like "foo.php", "testing.cpp", "idea.pl" etc etc that I have to clean up every month or so.

I was devastated when my HDD packed in a couple of months back and I lost my *very first* coding projects (PHP). I'm an idot for not backing up things and in that case I'd actually backed stuff up then deleted the backups to create some space for something stupid. Grr :x

Generally, cleaning up your system and orgainising files is a nice thing to do though :D
In my case many of the files were incredibly old and really served no purpose except for nostalgia...

It's been so long since I've worked in assmbler, even with the comments I'd have a hard time following.

As for cleaning your system...it does feel nice...like cleaning your physical desktop does :)

p.s-You guys are suppose to help me justify deleting old files, not tell me how you archive everything... :?

I'm starting to regret deleting my files :(