Ask HN: What to do when a project grows inorganically?
About two years ago I started working on a few projects for a gaming community I was starting. I ended up making a small "stack" that consists of an event based plugin stack, server management systems & utilities, monitoring systems as well as many other things that I have needed.
The problem started to arise when I finally had to start maintaining/fixing everything. The largest of the projects has grown over 120,000 lines. This would be fine, but the problem is accented by the fact that I didn't leave any comments nor did I start using any source control until I was almost done with the project (because I am an idiot, "good code explains itself" I said, how naive was I?).
If that wasn't enough, I am also using way too many different languages. A majority of everything written in Java, PHP, C, and BATCH/BASH scripts.
It's getting to the point where I am wondering if I should nuke the projects and start over.
Does anyone know what what language would work the for being maintainable, fast, and fit all of my use cases (Websites, communication across a network, managing processes/daemons, portability)? I'd like to have, if possible, write everything in one language and still be clean.
I guess that this is at least a good learning experience for me. Most people, from what I understand, make this sort of mistake where it really matters, not in some side project.
In any event, thanks for reading this and I hope you at least got a good chuckle out of my misery.