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I'm surprised no one has suggested refactoring yet. Joel Spolsky wrote most eloquently on resisting the urge to rewrite quite some years ago. Often the best r

I'm surprised no one has suggested refactoring yet. Joel Spolsky wrote most eloquently on resisting the urge to rewrite quite some years ago. Often the best response to a convoluted brittle looking system is to just attack it with a series of small refactorings that clearly preserve the current behavior, while eliminating unnecessary confusion and complexity until you can finally see clearly the bigger picture.

rdingwall 15y ago
'Working Effectively With Legacy Code' by Mike Feathers is an excellent read for tackling systems like this. Basically a series of down-in-the-trenches strategies for getting legacy code under unit tests - even if you're not sure what it's supposed to do - so you can start refactoring with a safety net.