It was prototype code, OP said that it was unmaintainable, and complained about, among other things, the "web-boys" adding unit tests - I'm not a 100% coverage

It was prototype code, OP said that it was unmaintainable, and complained about, among other things, the "web-boys" adding unit tests - I'm not a 100% coverage zealot or anything, but adding some tests is not exactly hipster shit, it's a perfectly justifiable step when taking a prototype messaging app into production, especially if you have time in the schedule. This does not sound to me like they hopped on a bandwagon and wrecked working code, it sounds like they were trying to bring some fast and dirty code that they didn't like the structure of closer to a style that they were familiar with, which is reasonable. Of course we don't know any real details, maybe the web boys really were a bunch of copypasta idiots that messed it all up - I've seen this scenario play out both ways, and the one thing that's for sure is that prototype engineers are always skeptical of work that other people do on their babies, whether they do it well or not.