I’m finding that one of the biggest time sinks is code that looks like it’s doing something other than what it’s actually doing.

Code smells draw the eye when debugging. Your brain wants the problem to be in the code that’s clearly “wrong”. So smelly code anywhere near common code paths has a huge cost compared to smelly code in some leaf function in an obscure feature.

One of the wisdoms of XP, I think. The code you touch the most should be the sanest.