Work starting with zero base is tough. Since there are no standards, we must decide everything with trial and error. So, usually, look for a precedent close to what you are going to do and modify it. In that case, you do not have to change everything, only change the necessary parts. It ends sooner than starting from zero base. And the less you change, the quicker it ends. Sometimes you can use it without changing anything.
In my work, it is common to compare many calculation cases by changing parameters in various ways. In that case, I divide the folder for each calculation case, change the folder name, and fix the file name of the input file. For example, input.fem.
This allows me to use common scripts to extract results from all calculation folders.
When programming, it is easier to change parameters that you can change later in the first one as variables than when writing values directly without using variables.
Example 1 N = 10 For i in range (n): Process 1
For i in range (n): Process 2
Example 2 For i in range (10): Process 1
Process 2
In the case of changing the number of iterations, in the example 1, the changed part is one, whereas in the example 2, there are two parts.
Efforts to minimize changes by identifying what is different and what does not change make work more efficient.