100%. I worked alone for a few years. Again self taught web development. I tried to read the “best practices” for the languages I was learning. But it was bugs galore and code I feared maintaining after release.
I then spent 5 months at a company in a team where every bit of code went through a peer review process. Even I was responsible for reviewing others code. I learnt a hell of a lot, we barely had any bugs and if we found a bug, it was usually easy to fix. Since then, writing maintainable and (importantly) readable code is my standard and I try and help other Devs do the same.
It's nice how you are telling the OP to just learn to write nice code and then you support it by anecdote about how others taught you to write nice code.
I am not under the impression that OP wants to continue writing bad code.
That’s exactly what I was referring to. I thought by replying to the comment that mentioned joining a team would have provided the context of what I was agreeing too...
I then spent 5 months at a company in a team where every bit of code went through a peer review process. Even I was responsible for reviewing others code. I learnt a hell of a lot, we barely had any bugs and if we found a bug, it was usually easy to fix. Since then, writing maintainable and (importantly) readable code is my standard and I try and help other Devs do the same.