New comment by code_duck in "Ask HN: Have you ever inherited a codebase nobody on the team could understand?"

A couple situations have arisen for me.

One, adopting necessary libraries that are lacking features, have way too many features, or questionable code quality. Examples have been an animated slideshow carousel, Python and PHP OAuth, and a WordPress theme. I thoroughly read the code for each of those, deleted the parts I didn’t need, and literally rearranged everything.

Then there are the times I go back to my code after a few years and have no idea what is going on. If possible, I just leave it alone if it’s working. Sometimes I need to use a new language or have developed a better coding style. In those cases I’ve rewritten it with a close eye to whatever edge cases I seem to be handling in the old code.

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