I really admire the work of conservators. Imagine being given an extremely important and yet fragile piece of code and you only have ~1 shot at refactoring it (

I really admire the work of conservators. Imagine being given an extremely important and yet fragile piece of code and you only have ~1 shot at refactoring it (unless they want to turn into one of the infamous restoration memes). That's what these people have to contend with. They have to gain an intricate understanding not just of the function of the object but also how it was put together. Make just one mistake, and a one-of-a-kind artifact could be ruined forever.