Legacy code often gets unfair criticism from developers who encounter it for the first time. Written under different constraints, time pressures, and best practices, it deserves respect for the value it created and the fact that it still works. Rather than immediately rewriting everything or blaming the original author, developers should identify problematic areas, prioritize fixes based on actual risk and maintenance burden, and focus on avoiding introducing new legacy code themselves. Accepting that every developer will eventually leave imperfect code behind is key to a healthier engineering culture.
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