How organized are you guys?

[RhoSigma]

I've just 5 folders inside the qb64 installation folder

QB64Company -- Programs related/used at my working place
QB64GuiTools -- Lastest working release of my GuiTools
QB64GuiToolsDEV -- The current development branch of my GuiTools
QB64Library -- My Libraries Collection
QB64RhoSigma -- My private stuff, snippets, experiments ...

Each of this 5 folders has a maximum of 2 levels deep sub-folders to organize stuff, if it turns out it would be necessary to add another (3rd) level of sub-folders for a specific file/project, then I rather rethink if it wouldn'd eventually fit into an existing folder when looking at it from a different point of view, which worked out very well until now.

The 5 main folders are also in a private repository at GitHub, which is always up to date with the local content.
This way I've always a up to date codebase when doing stuff at work or at a friends computer. I just need to download and unpack QB64 and then download my stuff from GitHub into the QB64 folder and I'm ready to go.

Also I do pack the 5 main folders into a 7-Zip archive once a month and save it on 2 different USB flash sticks, because things saved in one place only are absolutly NOT SAVE.

[johannhowitzer]

I am compulsively organized, to a fault.  When I play video games, I make spreadsheets and notes and track everything by hand.  Right now I'm playing through Final Fantasy X for the nth time, and I have a spreadsheet showing instances remaining on each character's overdrive mode learning.  For each type.  So every time Lulu evades, I reduce the number by one in her "Dancer" row.  Every time Wakka lands a status effect, same thing for his "Tactician" row.  Sometimes when people watch me play games, it drives them crazy.  Makes for very thorough speedrun routing, though!

I'm sure some here by now are familiar with (and annoyed by) my use of Notepad to code my big game project, but it's what I have to use, since I often do coding during downtime at work, and I can't use outside software.  So I'm up around 6000 lines of code now, in Notepad.  You don't manage that kind of thing without strict organization.  All my routines are indexed and categorized, whitespace is used for visual clarity everywhere (the QB64 IDE would actually ruin this), and my folders are all where they are very much on purpose.

Being so organized takes time up front, but I reap pretty huge benefits later on.  When I have to debug, it takes me maybe an hour or two at most, since I've already built in quite a bit of tools to let me see how data is being handled - such as a good old fashioned "debug menu" where I can scroll through the spawned entities and watch their data, edit player health, ammo, available weapons, turn on hitbox display, all during runtime.  I even have a rudimentary level editor, minus some abstraction - it's really only meant for me to use.

[Pete]

I am compulsively organized, to a fault.  When I play video games, I make spreadsheets and notes and track everything by hand.  Right now I'm playing through Final Fantasy X for the nth time, and I have a spreadsheet showing instances remaining on each character's overdrive mode learning.  For each type.  So every time Lulu evades, I reduce the number by one in her "Dancer" row.  Every time Wakka lands a status effect, same thing for his "Tactician" row.  Sometimes when people watch me play games, it drives them crazy.  Makes for very thorough speedrun routing, though!

I'm sure some here by now are familiar with (and annoyed by) my use of Notepad to code my big game project, but it's what I have to use, since I often do coding during downtime at work, and I can't use outside software.  So I'm up around 6000 lines of code now, in Notepad.  You don't manage that kind of thing without strict organization.  All my routines are indexed and categorized, whitespace is used for visual clarity everywhere (the QB64 IDE would actually ruin this), and my folders are all where they are very much on purpose.

Being so organized takes time up front, but I reap pretty huge benefits later on.  When I have to debug, it takes me maybe an hour or two at most, since I've already built in quite a bit of tools to let me see how data is being handled - such as a good old fashioned "debug menu" where I can scroll through the spawned entities and watch their data, edit player health, ammo, available weapons, turn on hitbox display, all during runtime.  I even have a rudimentary level editor, minus some abstraction - it's really only meant for me to use.

@johannhowitzer I'm sincerely glad that method works for you, but if I took your approach, I have zero programs and a nice little 10 x 6 padded cell to reflect on my lack of productivity. So for me to have 6,000, 20,000, even 90,000 line projects means I have to give up all the back end time savings and run and gun my way through the prolect. When I was younger, I'd code in all caps, use single or two-letter variable names, no white space, and no comments. I miss those days. I'm more conventional now, but I find myself wishing I had more synergism between coding and organizing. I love to code, but hate to include comments. I feel like I would spend too much time commenting, indexing, and trying to figure out what I might need to revisit the project. Doing that totally kills my interest in creating the project. Fortunately, on the back end, I have little resistance to debugging or code modifying but it does drive me crazy to try to recall what the various parts of the project accomplish, or if it is even safe to run without changing files on my system. So my hat's off to you for being able to embrace the best of both worlds. From what I'm reading here, that's more the exception than the rule.

Pete