something I can think of is that at first the if-branch did do something, then later it got commented out. And later again someone deleted the commented-out cod

something I can think of is that at first the if-branch did do something, then later it got commented out. And later again someone deleted the commented-out code instead of rewriting it. That'd be something pretty silly to do. But sadly I've seen enough bad code that this would not surprise me.