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19 Comments

Lost 40 days of work and I'm the only one to blame.

Hello everyone,

I had hoped my first post on IH would be more lighthearted, maybe sharing the process of building my first startup, celebrating a milestone or asking for tips from the community.

Unfortunately my first post is about how a power outage resulted in a ssd dying, which happened to have all the code of the website I was making, that for some stupid reason I didn't backup anywhere else.

I have no one but myself to blame, and it hadn't even been 24 hours yet but I know the chances of me rebuilding this website again from scratch are slim to none, and that I won't be able to bring myself to work on something that to me feels like it had failed before it even started.

The sad thing is that just yesterday I had finished the core functions of the website all that was left was the user's profile and finishing the payment process. I was even aiming for an early march release.

I don't think I'll be able to work on anything for at least a couple of weeks now, at least I'll try to come to terms with how stupid I am and try to think of new ideas that i hopefully will remember to backup this time.

Sorry if this post made you sad or ruined your mood, I just felt like venting and had no place else to do that but here. again I'm sorry and thanks for reading.

  1. 5

    Im sorry for what happen to you. Have you try to take it to recovery service? they might able to restore the data if you lucky.

    Just a tips, i personally always push my code into private gitlab repository (it's free), just in case my laptop is stolen or something bad happens.

    1. 1

      I went to some repair shops but they all said they couldn't do anything about it, I'll try to look for a more experienced place that knows how to recover ssds, hopefully one of them knows how to.
      The funny thing is that i did make a private repo, but didn't push even once.
      lesson learned i guess :D

  2. 3

    The same happened to me when my SSD corrupted and I didn't push any code for months to remote git branch.... I didn't want to start from scratch for a few months, but then I pulled myself together and redid everything.

    Have you thought about SSD recovery services? Maybe they will be able to restore at a high cost.

    1. 1

      I'll keep trying to recover it for at least a week but then I'll just give up on it completely, maybe that's for the better.
      I already have the domain name so at least that'll keep me tied to this idea a little bit, I'll try to do other things for a while before giving it another go.

  3. 2

    Been there @Alawdy!

    I once forgot to push a code repo that I worked on for a month and ended up wiping the computer when I got a new laptop. Found out it wasn't on Github a few days before I was supposed to launch it...

    Needless to say, I almost threw up the first time I realized what I had done. But a deadline is a deadline so spent almost three days straight coding that shit out haha.

    Good luck Alawdy but remember shit happens and people always make mistakes! Both small and BIG!

    1. 1

      It's amazing how quickly the second version can be written!

      1. 1

        Haha luckily had a lot of info that I recalled off the top of my head. And it definitely wasn't easy! Almost 50 hours or coding went in those three days...

  4. 2

    If you can't bring yourself to work on it again then the idea isn't worth much anyhow. And next time you will work faster and with more care. Always use Git nowaday, push code to Github, never worry about this kind of disaster again.

  5. 2
    1. Start using some git service, commit and push...
    2. You'd be surprised how much faster you can do the same thing the second time, you might redo these 40 days in a week.
    3. After you can shake yourself up a bit, know that dealing with hardships is part of the journey. Don't let this tiny inner be the end of you, there are way worse ones coming, build yourself up mentally
    1. 2

      Thank you,
      I really did screw up by not using a git service, at least I'll never forget to use it now :)
      I did rethink how long it'd take to redo everything and i believe 20 days would be enough, but i need to take a break from it for a while, since i don't think I'll be able to work on the same idea again this quickly.
      I have made a couple of mistakes so far, some of them cost a lot of money unlike this one, maybe I should start to look at mistakes as learning experiences, which they have been, but I need to come to terms with how easily it is for everything to go wrong out of nowhere.

      1. 2

        You could also consider your tempermant of a more impolsive doer, which is good and find someone that's more of a critical thinker to balance you out and reduce future similar issues (not saying that's at all easy)

        Take the time you need and get back to it when you can.

      2. 1

        You could also consider your tempermant of a more impolsive doer, which is good and find someone that's more of a critical thinker to balance you out and reduce future similar issues (not saying that's at all easy)

        Take the time you need and get back to it when you can.

  6. 2

    I know you said you don't have any copies anywhere else and this only applies to some stacks, but is it possible you have a copy of it deployed to a remote host anywhere? Even if it's been bundled and minified, that could be useful while recovering (especially if you have source maps).

    If doing stuff helps you feel better, maybe there's a product you could make that would save others from this exact circumstance? Or you could do a talk at a local meetup group? Write a more detailed blog post about what you're going through to help people in a similar position cope?

    Good luck bouncing back from this experience in some way, I'm sure you can!

  7. 2

    That sucks about your website code. Sorry to hear that. Maybe take a moment to write down the things you learned while you were building the site while it's fresh in your memory. I'm sure everything you've learned will come in handy in your future projects.

    I hope to go traveling sometime next year and I'm going to assume I'll lose or break my laptop somewhere along the way. Even though it's never happened before, Im sure, like you've just experience, the chit will hit the fan at some point. Nothing is wasted if we learn from our mistakes.

    Start a new project when you're ready. You might find something even better than what you were working on. If not, you can always go back to your previous one and give it another go.

  8. 2

    Hi @Alawdy, don't be so harsh on yourself. Shit happens at bigger houses all day long :) Remember you had the opportunity to experience your skill set and learned something new ! :) For future just use SVN or GIT, which ever is simplest for your and you'll be all right. (edit: don't forgot to commit often)

    Best of luck and keep it up!
    Alex

    1. 1

      Thank you, I do believe i learned a couple of things in the process if not for learning to backup frequently.
      I'll take a break for a while, maybe I'll come up with better ideas then. and thanks for suggesting git, I do use it every now and then, but i guess i need to turn it into a normal part of coding so i never make this mistake again.

      1. 1

        Yep, make it a habit. I do my work in a branch and push it to Github every day no matter what state it's in.

  9. 1

    Sorry to hear that. It's a hard lesson to learn, but I think most of us have been there in one form or another! For me it was back in the late 1990s when I rm -rf *the entire C++ project I had been working on all semester for my first programming class two weeks before it was due. 20+ years later and I can still remember the exact moment and what it felt like.

    Two things I learned from that experience:

    1. Version control everything, and save it somewhere else (back then it was cvs and ftp... nowadays use Github or Bitbucket)
    2. You can write the second version in a tiny fraction of the time, and it will be significantly better!

    Don't let this get you too down. These things happen.

  10. 1

    I always create the local repository within a Google Drive folder for this reason :) Even if the laptop is on fire, everything important is mirrored on the cloud.

    The best bet is to take the drive to the repair centre of the maker of the drive. They have the most advanced ways of extracting lost data.

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