100 Days of code – 75% complete

3/4 of the way there! I can see the end in sight!

I’m still working on the command line music player. I spent the last 5 days exclusively working on the file navigation interface. I wanted to make the file navigation look similar to the Commander interface from WinSCP (and others). This means that I’ll have the parent folder’s contents displayed on the left, and the selected folder’s contents displayed on the right.

It’s surprisingly complex! I never realized exactly how many different things a Commander style file interface needs to do. For instance, when you hit the down arrow, it highlights the next folder in the left pane, and the entire right pane has to update with the selected folder’s contents. If you hit the right arrow (to go down a level), both panes update to show the new working directory on the left, and the selected folder contents on the right.

I feel like I’m only making a tiny amount of progress each day, but there is progress. I hope that getting the program to play music will be the easy part, but I know that’ll have its own set of challenges.

I’m also realizing how involved a complex program is. I’m constantly reading and rereading the code that I wrote the day before to try to understand my own program before I make changes. It seems that I should spend some time commenting my code!

I’m hoping that I’ll have a working media player by the end of this challenge. Even if I don’t complete this media player though, I’m still learning more every day!