I can't count how many times I've said "this is really bad, I it is worth rewriting to fix all the issues", only to discover that there were good reasons for all the past decisions and so we end up with the same mess as before - except that now I know what it must be that way.
replyNot always, but very often people in the past had good reason for what they did.
Those are the comments that should persist in the code. I hate when the AI edits and removes my "why" comments. I want the refactor to make it less messy but keep why it's that kind of mess.
replyToo Soon often we thought those were obvious and didn't comment. Meanwhile there are detailed comments about things nobody cares about.
replyI just put a comment in yesterday for this very reason - there was a flag I had set to false, and then looking at the library docs for something else thought maybe it should be true but that doesn't work how I would have implemented it if I had created the library and written the docs how I did.
replyIt is a very capable library, and when I first started using it the docs were more Oracle docs looking - but I could find what I wanted easily. Now, it is much more annoying to delve through but looks more modern.
As relevant today as it was 26 years ago: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-...
replySee also: Chesterton's Fence