Dev Diary - Refactor Season

Refactor, refactor, refactor.

This week felt like cleaning a closet that keeps growing new shelves. I’ll add one feature that takes a week or two to build, and suddenly there’s this ripple of “fix this, tighten that, re-name those.” It’s not the kind of progress you can screenshot, but it’s the kind that keeps the app from wobbling later.

I spent a lot of time rereading the same lines until the words stopped making sense. A missing brace eats fifteen minutes. A misspelled variable takes thirty. It’s funny how small things can bend a whole day.

At dinner, the kids asked, “Baba, how’s the app?” and then, as usual, “How many bugs now?” I laughed, because the honest answer changes by the hour. Some nights it feels like I’m bailing water; other nights the sea is calm and I can actually see the horizon.

There were real wins: the server boots without drama, and Flutter compiles cleanly. That’s a quiet kind of relief. The rough part is the in-between, those integration paths where everything has to hold hands just right. A few end-to-end tests are still red. They’re not catastrophic, just… stubborn.

What I’m reminding myself: this is the work. Refactoring isn’t backtracking; it’s choosing a better trail. The code gets a little clearer. The names get a little kinder. I trust it a little more.

Plan for tomorrow: pick one failing path and make it pass. Add a tiny guardrail so it can’t break the same way again. Write down what I learned. Close the laptop before midnight (I’m trying).

Brick by brick. Fewer bugs than yesterday. Closer than last week.