myutil.js

I have a set of JavaScript utility functions in a file called myutil.js.

I used to have a new copy of that file for each project that I created. That seemed redundant, but I didn't have a nice place to host a single version.

Then I discovered github, and decided to host a single version there. However, that version got too big and outdated, and I didn't feel like I could delete or refactor stuff for fear of breaking existing projects.

So I went back to having a new copy in each project, and I felt good about it, because it made me feel like my projects were self contained. I also felt free to refactor the file as I saw fit, and it seemed like evolution, since each version of the file was a child of the "fittest" parent.

However, sometimes I would remember writing some nice function in some utility file, but couldn't remember where it was.

Also, I started hiring people to help with projects, and I felt like my personal utility file was non-standard, so I didn't feel like I could expect people to use my utilities.

So I started using underscore (which a friend had suggested when they first saw my utility file), which is a somewhat "standard" utility that has all the functional list processing functions that I like, and they work similarly to the ones in myutil.js.

Of course, I still want some utilities that underscore doesn't provide, so I now extend underscore, and I've gone back to a single version on github, but I'll give it a version number: myutil2.js.

(I've thought about linking to commits, but those urls are messy, and I fear that the load times may be slower since I'm not sure what github needs to do to resurrect files in previous commits.)