I'm just learning this now. I have built lots of stuff over the years but I have always had to balance my time between actually coding, managing the coders, and

I'm just learning this now. I have built lots of stuff over the years but I have always had to balance my time between actually coding, managing the coders, and running the business side of things. Now, over the last few years we have actually experienced a lot of growth and our code has started to require some scale and I have had time to focus a bit more on the code. I feel like I have learned more in the last 2 years than the 20 before that. I've had to focus so much more on actually architecting the system, thinking about how the data is stored in the DB, creating a smooth developer experience, creating maintainable code, and actually tracking and logging tons of detail about the app so we can find and diagnose bottlenecks before the become a problem. So in my case, it hasn't been so much about having to maintain it for more than a few years (I have projects I have maintained for 10 years now), but the fact that this one is experiencing some real scale has really laid bare my bad (and good) decisions and forced me to learn about and start making better more informed decisions.