system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Why do I get so confused over my code?

I'm new to python and i seem to enjoy the process of writing and designing a program,but the only problem i always stumble upon when I'm writing a long program is getting confused over my code.

I just can't keep up with it and i get really confused over it. How do programmers cope with this issue if they experience it in any way and how can I since i find this very demotivating.
gpt
Well, you're new to this, so no wonder you're confused.

You can deal with this in a couple of ways:

* split code into (small) functions (and classes, if necessary). This will mean that once you write a function that does its _one_ task _correctly_, you can safely forget about its implementation and focus on the bigger picture. Then you can write another function that uses a couple of these smaller functions. Once you get that new function working too - it's relatively safe to stop caring about how it works and start focusing on the bigger picture! And so on and so forth. Same thing with classes: if you need to, create a class that does one thing _well_ and build something more complicated on top of it.
* split code into modules. Same thing, modularize everything. If your code is getting really big, maybe it's possible to factor out a chunk of it into its own module. Make sure it works fine and "forget" about its implementation and start focusing on the bigger picture.
* draw on a piece of paper. Translating ideas straight into code can be challenging, so it may be easier to draw a kind of UML diagram of your class, or a graph that describes your algorithm. You'll probably end up with a bunch of messy paper, but hopefully you'll have a better idea about what you're actually doing.
* write more code. As always, practice makes perfect: today you're intimidated by your own code - tomorrow you're hacking at the Linux Kernel with ease.
* use `assert` to make sure that your code isn't running on invalid data. If you want the argument of some function to be positive, `assert argument > 0` at the beginning of the function - then you won't have to worry about passing an invalid argument as much, because if you do pass an invalid argument, Python will raise an error and tell you where it came from.