”Features are often added with minimal effort and without refactoring the system to make the abstractions reflect the new feature set. So these additions, hacks

”Features are often added with minimal effort and without refactoring the system to make the abstractions reflect the new feature set. So these additions, hacks, and patches are added on top of each other until the codebase becomes a big ball of mud… When a developer faces the choice of completing a task in 1 day with a patch versus asking for two additional weeks to refactor, the result will usually be the first. Multiply that by 1000 over five years, and you’ll get a typical enterprise software project.” Well put!