I think most people wrestle with this. What I do is:

- append the current date to just about every file or project I start. - save different versions with different dates. - have a 'make' folder on a 1 TB USB drive that contains just about all the crap and nonsense I've ever made, with categories such as 'web', 'windows', 'osx', etc. And then subfolders 'max', 'c++builder', 'arduino', etc. This huge folder is auto backed up to another drive using an rsync command in my crontab:

# Backup make folder. 22 4,10,16,22 * * * rsync -arutxq /Volumes/440Hz/make /Volumes/Backups/Backups/ &> /dev/null

- have a Crashplan account that just silently backs up everything in the background all the time.

So that's the part where I keep everything. As for your basic question: I put Arduino code that is important to a max patch somewhere in the max patch as a comment. At least then, when I open something a year later, I know exactly which Arduino sketch was working with that Max patch.

Also: comment comment comment! Even the silliest things go into comments. I just have too many projects going on, so I might forget that I have to double-click [midiin] and choose this and that midi in device. So that goes into a comment as well.

GitHub? Well, I have hesitated to litter it with my code snippets, but I've chosen to use it only for ongoing projects. But I don't see why you shouldn't put your useful scripts in there. Especially when they stand on their own.

When projects are completely "married" to certain files, where everything belongs together, I also save them together. Ableton Live has a great "Collect All and Save" command. If there's a Max patch that's vital to such a project, I copy it there myself too.

And for procedures I had to figure out, I just share them on my website: henszimmerman.com. But I've been planning since forever to move all that to other places, like Instructables. Sigh, the working married life with a kid, huh?

Good luck!

Anyways, that's just me.

Thanks Hens! I missed your reply so it's a late response from me. So here's where I struggle: I work right now on a project with a specific goal, so I'd want to keep all the files together, across Max, Arduino etc.

But part of what I develop is really useful for other projects, and I'll probably re-use. it. So I could store that elsewhere - with the risk that I break the program I'm working on now if I make changes in the future

Or I keep it all in the project but then i'll need to go find 'what was that project where I created a nice modular way of dealing with xxx'

I suppose professional programmers have a way of dealing with this!