i keep repeating this, but i'm learning so much in the process of putting ttbp
together. i just wanted to take a second and step back and look at it.

*user-end version checking/patching*---since there are people running this
program who aren't me, if i make drastic changes to the infrastructure of the
program, i have to find ways to communicate this to users, and step them
through updates if needed. the way i'm doing this now is that everyone has a
version marker that the program looks at, compares it to what it's expecting,
and then performs relevant updates. so far, it seems to be working okay; i've
gotten fewer bug reports since i started doing this, at least. it also forces
me to slow down and be more deliberate with my changes, making sure
everything makes sense and that i can communicate new features or small
tweaks.

*documentation/style*---usually, when i document my code, i put little
scratches here and there so i can pick things up again later. at one point,
ttbp got too big for this to work, so i read up on documentation conventions
for python. the biggest change was when i realized i could just docstring
everything and have stuff show up in pydoc. i know what i like reading in
*other* pydoc modules, and that's started to change how i think about writing
my own documentation. i'm thinking about my code more in terms of how legible
it is for other people. i've always been shy about letting other people read
my code, mostly out of fear of judgement for how bad of a coder i perceive
myself as being. but, that's changed quite a bit here, and i've appreciated
having a few other people poke through my repo and make comments and
suggestions here and there.

i've still got so much to learn, and a lot of polish all around, but i'm very
proud of what i'm building here! i never knew i could feel this good about
pounding out code, both from what i like of the internal state, and what it
looks like when it's running. this is one of many side projects of mine right
now, and it's probably the one i'm most fond of at the moment. it's stretching
me as a person and letting me work on some really satisfying skills, putting me
right at the exciting part of the learning curve where it seems like i'll never
run out of things to work on.

i dropped out of my undergrad computer science program because many different
things were causing me pain and stress that i didn't know how to resolve.
slowly, i've been working back and undoing some of those.

i feel good, ttbp. thanks for asking!