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Legacy systems are like ancient temples: full of mystery, danger, and long-forgotten knowledge.

One wrong move and the whole thing might collapse. But somewhere deep inside lie years of embedded business logic, customer trust, and operational quirks that no rewrite can replace.

In this talk, we'll don the fedora and take up the whip as we explore techniques for exploring legacy codebases without triggering the traps. We'll dig into Source control archaeology, safe refactoring strategies, introducing tests in a hostile environment, and recognizing "cursed" files with high churn or hidden dependencies.

Whether you're maintaining a dusty monolith or inheriting a mystery repo, this session will equip you with tools and tactics to escape with the real treasure: Knowledge of how to extract business value and gradually modernize.

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Legacy systems aren't inherently bad—they're just systems that have aged. To work effectively with them, focus on two key dimensions: understanding (knowledge of how the system works) and supportability (tooling and guardrails for safe changes). Improve supportability through reproducible builds, CI/CD pipelines, automated tests, and observability. Build understanding by mining Git history to find frequently changed files, bug-prone areas, and hidden coupling between components. Apply refactoring techniques appropriate to the system's lifecycle stage—critical support, maintenance, or active development. Legacy work is ultimately risk management: assess what you know, what safety nets exist, and whether your approach fits the system's current phase.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Legacy Code - William Brander - NDC London 2026