One thing you learn over time is many of those code horrors are there for a good reason, put there by someone solving a real problem, in the best possible way g

One thing you learn over time is many of those code horrors are there for a good reason, put there by someone solving a real problem, in the best possible way given time constraints. It is just the reason is lost to history. This is one reason the "big re-write" almost always fails. You are throwing away all those hard learned lessons just because they aren't apparent on reading of the code. That is also true (perhaps less often) for byzantine process related procedures.