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I actually get a surprising amount of statisfacation on re-writing my old code in a better way. Not even changing languages or using new fancy tools, its just t

I actually get a surprising amount of statisfacation on re-writing my old code in a better way. Not even changing languages or using new fancy tools, its just that old code I still use means I know by know exactly what the real use cases are and many of the edge cases that I didn't know when I wrote it originally. So when I do the re-write, I can do it so much better because I really do know what its supposed to do without having to guess at future possible use-cases. Writing good code is less about knowing how to get it to do what its supposed to do and more about knowing what its supposed to do in the first place. In the end the new code is usually very much more compact, faster, and easier to understand. A job well done like that feels good to do.

WJW 2y ago
Of course. We all feel like that and that kind of thing doesn't cause any problems. Issues arise is when somebody comes in asking for new features or bugfixes in code that you haven't used for years and which you are no longer interested in. Worse is when people ask for bugfixes in software that you haven't written yourself, have never used, but are now responsible for maintaining.
- anon22981 2y ago
  Bugfix =! rewriting code, though. Reworking an existing solution to be better is fun, but a bug fix often isn’t that. (When talking about ”rewriting code” I think of a larger scale than for example three lines of code)