Any actively maintained codebase always devolves into crap. Scopes change, technology shifts, bugs patched; code quality monotonically declines as you trend awa

Any actively maintained codebase always devolves into crap. Scopes change, technology shifts, bugs patched; code quality monotonically declines as you trend away from the assumptions the program was written with. No amount of rigor and discipline can stop this trend. If you truly care about high code quality, design your programs to be small and modular, and redesign them when assumptions change instead of repeatedly patching them. Rewriting is often unsuccessful as well, though. So practically speaking: best get used to the smell.