My Stumble with the ‘Nicky Blair’ Approach
Alright, let me tell you about this thing I tried recently, something folks were calling the ‘nicky blair’ method, or at least that’s what I heard someone call it. Wasn’t really sure what it was all about, seemed like just another buzzword floating around.
So, I had this small personal project I was working on, nothing fancy, just tinkering around. It was getting a bit messy, you know how it goes. Files everywhere, hard to find stuff. I remembered hearing about this ‘nicky blair’ idea, supposedly a way to keep things tidier. Thought, what the heck, might as well give it a try on this little project. Couldn’t hurt, right?
First thing I did was just try to understand the core idea. From the little I could piece together, it seemed to be about grouping things differently. Not by type, like all images in one folder, all scripts in another. But more by… feature? Or maybe by task? It was a bit fuzzy.
So, I started rearranging things.
- I took the login part of my project – the HTML, the CSS, the bit of JavaScript – and put them all together in one folder called ‘Login’.
- Then I did the same for the user profile section. Everything related to that went into a ‘UserProfile’ folder.
- Same for the small data display feature I had. All its bits went into a ‘DataDisplay’ folder.
It felt weird at first. Very different from how I usually organize my stuff. Usually, I’d have a ‘scripts’ folder, an ‘styles’ folder, an ‘images’ folder. This felt… scattered, yet grouped? Hard to explain.
Spent maybe an afternoon just moving files around, renaming things. Had to update some paths in my code too, which was a bit tedious. Honestly, halfway through, I wondered if I was just wasting my time. It felt like busy work.
After I got it all sorted according to this ‘nicky blair’ idea, I stepped back. Looked at the project structure. It was… different. When I needed to work on the login functionality again, I just went to the ‘Login’ folder. Everything I needed was right there. That part felt kind of neat, I admit.
Did it revolutionize my workflow? Nah, not really. For this small project, the difference wasn’t huge. Maybe on a bigger, more complex project with lots of moving parts, it might be more useful? Or maybe it’s just a matter of personal preference.
My final take? It was an interesting experiment. Didn’t change my life, but it gave me a different perspective on how to organize things. Not sure if I’ll stick with it for everything, my old habits are pretty ingrained. But it’s another tool in the toolbox, another way to think about structure. Glad I gave it a shot, at least now I know what it feels like in practice, not just as a concept I heard somewhere.
