Re:LibreOffice: cleaning and re-factoring a giant code-base ...
by berkut on Sunday February 17, 2013 @10:50AM
(#5235513)
Exactly.
Also, code that might look crap and seem to do weird stuff often handles intricate edge cases. But due to the lack of comments, it's not obvious what's going on.
I've been involved in several component refactorings when as a team we've gone "look how complicated the old code is, we can make it much simpler".
When we've re-written it and then tested it with actual production use cases, it then becomes obvious why the code was so convoluted previously. So time was wasted, but at least there are comments now (and in those cases, the code's slightly better).
Also, code that might look crap and seem to do weird stuff often handles intricate edge cases. But due to the lack of comments, it's not obvious what's going on.
I've been involved in several component refactorings when as a team we've gone "look how complicated the old code is, we can make it much simpler".
When we've re-written it and then tested it with actual production use cases, it then becomes obvious why the code was so convoluted previously. So time was wasted, but at least there are comments now (and in those cases, the code's slightly better).