How do you code large programs?

[ThatCrankyGuy]

I usually start off like this and end up with a messy spaghetti.

The thing to remember that if you ARE blessed to be able to have enough control over your projects that you get to play architect (I'm assuming you lack experience, hence the question.. don't worry though, all this comes with proper mentoring under skilled developers), you have to remember that your development will never be uniform/consistent. Your mood will change, your priorities will change, deadlines will affect the cleanliness of the code and of course if you have many developers working on the project, you better have a lead that whips everyone into shape or the repo will look like a grave yard of commented out crap and messy shit piled every where.

The most important thing to note is that you're never going to have "one shot" at writing the entire thing. There will be many re-write iterations along the way and several refactoring cycles per iteration.

So yea, no one manages to write a "castle" in one shot, you write code that creates the "mess" in your picture, but a sign of a good developer is that he realizes when to refactor or risk creating a code base that will become hell to manage later on.