Skeletons in my closet

Recently, I've had the benefit of helping a friend with his company's site. I used to work for him, and I was the original programmer for the site. As I'm working on it now, I'm almost amazing at how horrible the code is - it's almost embarrassing. I don't consider myself to be any kind of guru now, but this old code of mine is REALLY bad. It's enough to shake my head in disbelief that (a) I was allowed to write web applications and that (b) the site is still in use 8 years later. But while being embarrassed by my old work, it's been encouraging to work on it again for a few reasons.

First, I'm glad that I can now see how horrible the code is. It shows how much I've learned despite the fact that I've never had any formal training. As I said, I'm definitely no expert now, but I've definitely come a long way. Of course, it should also be said that their was probably nowhere to go but up with my skills.

I'm also encouraged by the fact that the site has continued to function for the company and meet their basic needs. In fact as I look back, no other job of mine has allowed me to be as big a benefit as I was to that company. I was able to literally change major portions of their business process to make the company much more efficient. It makes me smile to know that I helped that company so much.

Even though I was more than a little hesitant to dig up these old shameful bits of my past work, I'm glad I didn't pass it up.