Bad code is boring, because you quickly lose context or get confused by the 'bulldozer' approach that such code usually assumes. So it won't help if you try a

Bad code is boring, because you quickly lose context or get confused by the 'bulldozer' approach that such code usually assumes. So it won't help if you try and read it. To paraphrase Tolstoy's quote about happy families: "All good code is alike, yet each bad code is bad in its own way". I remember a piece of advice from some guru programmer I've read some time ago: "Don't just read the code - compile the program and try and change something in the code, maybe the window title, maybe add a menu item - something silly, but which forces you to figure out where things are done in code."