That is a very, very important point; well put. The "of course it sucks: changing requirements!" boogeyman means one of two things: "the code was written to do

That is a very, very important point; well put. The "of course it sucks: changing requirements!" boogeyman means one of two things: "the code was written to do the wrong thing because requirements changed/weren't communicated" or "the code was hard to change when it needed to do a new thing". Figuring out which of those two is in play is very important.