When starting to work on an existing codebase, I often find myself in a state of despair. The code doesn’t make any sense, the programmers must have all been idiots, why on earth would they do it like this, … I hate everything about the code.

I spend hours going through it, thinking to myself, I would have done a much better job writing this and making a list of changes that must be done in order for the project to conform to my standards.

But then, when I have spent enough time reading everything, something clicks in my mind. I see what the authors were trying to do and everything makes sense. It’s actually kind of clever.

And I feel dumb. Every time.