Building games is a learning experience. Constantly evolving in methods and efficiency, it's easy to look at code that you have scripted and see the time you put into it, blinding yourself from the lack of efficiency it may be having on your project. Taking the time to go through and rewrite code, especially when you have noticeably been having to script around it, can help your project just as much as writing new code.
I'm scrapping about 90% of the code I have written up to this point. It's fluff, it's inefficient, it's difficult to put into use. I have no issues with doing this. It's not as if the code means nothing; when I look at it, I see hard work and time. A couple hundred hours worth of time to be a little more precise. But it all is for nothing if it doesn't evolve with the project. As I grow as a developer, so must my process, and that means my scripts need to grow to fit that process.
I never try and look at scrapping anything as a bad thing. I've never once let myself feel as though "all that work was for nothing". I look at every line as a learning experience. When I wrote it, it had a purpose. I was using those lines to create something from nothing, and in-exchange it gave me the knowledge to better understand what I was creating as a whole. An understanding that continues to grow even now, as I rewrite my games past.
They say that art is never complete. That an artist will never look at their work and see finality. You must consider yourself an artist as you script; being critical of your own work, and constantly seeing where it could be improved upon.
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