I use code cleanup as a term very differently, as a programmer with 20 years commercially developing software.. My process often involves creating layers/versi

I use code cleanup as a term very differently, as a programmer with 20 years commercially developing software.. My process often involves creating layers/versions of the code that improve till the stage it's production ready. It might be half a dozen or more iterations to get to production quality for complex code, and the latter versions involve a lot of 'code cleanup'! This includes things like implementing TODOS, adding logging, and refactoring and refining the concepts, the naming, making the code more dry, better srp and generally elegant code I hope that someone else would be happy to inherit and maintain and extend. That someone is often me! It's taking something that works, mostly, but has limited clarity and elegance and higher future costs to work with, and 'cleaning it up'. Like a home or worksite cleaning up after working gets you ready to use it or work there productively in future. I do this in most codebases I work in for awhile as well, when there's clearly need for improvements in dry, srp, conceptual patterns and clarity. Our industry jargon calls this refactoring, but cleaning up actually relates to other stakeholders than the highly trained engineers, so I will generally call it cleaning up. I agree with you that newer engineers often want to rewrite existing working things for many wrong reasons - but I think the specific term code cleanup has a place. I think it's interesting that you've noted it as a code smell for a junior about to wreck a significant amount of company productivity. That's an all too common problem these days as the majority of engineers are junior with less than 5 to 10 years due to larger numbers entering the industry. I'm interested in the 'successful' strategies experienced engineers have used to head this off at the pass in organisations with non technical management who often listen to the loudest voices if they can't truly understand the issues themselves.