That's true, it was a bit of both. But in my experience "codebase became difficult and unpleasant" usually just means that the codebase is large and complex, and people don't want to take the time to understand it. It's always funny to me that people will talk about how elegant a codebase is one day, and the very next decide that it's crufty and old. Did it flip overnight? Did the cruft build up while they were calling it elegant? No, the only thing that changed was the complexity level. When people say cruft, I usually assume they're just frustrated by necessary complexity.