when i approach a new largish (say < 500k lines) codebase I'm supposed to be working on, I'll often just go on a giant tear and completely refactor it to be the

when i approach a new largish (say < 500k lines) codebase I'm supposed to be working on, I'll often just go on a giant tear and completely refactor it to be the way I like it. in the process I end up breaking several foundational assumptions and have to spend even more time carefully backing out my changes and trying to get it to work again. rewriting the whole thing isn't your job (usually). check out a fresh new copy. now you can make a pretty informed decision about the best way to make the changes you're actually being paid to make. or, more rarely, now I have a less tested but substantially smaller version (once I replaced a 500k library with a 15k version by gutting all the abstraction layers), and if its not a maintenance smallest-delta kind of deal, I just go with that. anyways, the shortest path to the goal isn't always to chip away gingerly at the surface with your eyes closed and your head turned away - take a nice deep dive, you can always swim back up.