You may have heard it said that ‘All code is legacy code.’ It’s a useful guiding principle — and truer than we want to admit.

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Maintaining legacy code involves understanding and working with the often convoluted and outdated code written decades ago. The post reflects on the challenges of maintaining such code, the evolution of programming practices, and the realization that today's code will also be seen as antiquated in the future. The author emphasizes humility and respect for the efforts of past developers while acknowledging the continuous growth of the software engineering profession.

The worst programmer I know

I once worked at a company where the lead programmer no kidding, legit, started in the mail room. He moved to the area from a foreign country, started in the mail room and buddied up to and talked his way into the IT group.
Much of his first code was still running when I got there. I could literally line his code up and see his learning over the years (including some code that was still working completely by accident!). None of it was learned at university. It was all done on-the-job.
It was easy initially to criticize his skills as a “lead” developer. But put in context of where he started, it was nothing less than amazing.

every 2 weeks I curse myself for the code i I wrote. Refactoring is my addiction now

The past always has had fewer resources than the present. It is good to keep note of that when reviewing any previous work.

Such an interesting perspective. I love it