Alright, so I had this little script, kinda like a basic template, a ‘master’ copy if you will. It did its job, but just barely. Super simple, maybe too simple. It handled the main thing okay, but none of the tricky bits or edge cases. Left a lot to be desired, you know?
I kept running into situations where it just wasn’t enough. Had to manually fix things afterwards, which was eating up time. So, I figured, okay, time to actually sit down and make this thing properly useful. Time to elaborate on that basic idea.
Getting Stuck In
First thing I did was just run the old script a few times, really watch what it did and, more importantly, what it didn’t do. I made a list, just scribbled down on paper, of all the annoying bits and the stuff it missed.
Then, I opened up the code. It wasn’t much to look at, honestly. Pretty barebones. I started by adding some checks. Like, what happens if the input data is weird? Or missing? The old script just crashed or spat out garbage. So I put in some basic error handling. Took a bit of fiddling to get right.
Next up was adding more options. The original thing just did one specific task, its way. No flexibility. I wanted to be able to tweak things, maybe change how it processed stuff depending on the situation. So I added some parameters, some flags you could set. This part got messy quick. Had to refactor, move code around so it wasn’t just a giant pile of ‘if’ statements.
- Checked input data more carefully.
- Added ways to handle unexpected stuff.
- Put in options to change behavior.
- Cleaned up the structure a bit.
The Elaboration Phase
This was where the real ‘elaboration’ happened. I started adding the more complex logic. Stuff the original script completely ignored. For example, it needed to handle different types of files, not just the one it was built for. That meant writing new bits of code for each type. And making sure the script knew which bit to use.
I spent a good while just testing these new parts. Fed it all sorts of weird files I could find. Some worked, some broke the script spectacularly. Lots of debugging. Print statements everywhere, you know the drill. Slowly, piece by piece, it started working more reliably.
Also thought about the output. The old script just dumped text. Not very helpful. I worked on making the output clearer. Maybe a summary at the end? Some formatting to make it readable? Added that in too. It’s the little things that make a difference sometimes.
Wrapping It Up
Finally, after a lot of back and forth, testing, fixing, adding more stuff, it felt… complete. Or at least, much more elaborated than the original master copy. It handles most of the weird cases I could think of, it’s more flexible, and the output actually makes sense.
It’s not perfect, probably still bugs hiding in there. But it’s way better than that basic thing I started with. It actually saves me time now, which was the whole point. Definitely worth the effort to go back and elaborate on that simple start.
