Mentally grasp large project

How do you keep track of large projects?

The trick to understanding a large code base is to not try to understand all of it. After a certain size, you can’t hold a mental model in your head of the entire thing. You start with an anchor point that makes sense for whatever task you need to work on first, then branch from there, learning only the parts you need and trusting that the rest of it works as advertised. It’s just like understanding recursion. If you try to hold the entire stack in your head your brain explodes.

Focus on just that task instead of trying to understand the entire code base, and piece by piece your familiarity will grow.