I think 'voodoo code' in this case means something a little bit more than 'dead code'. It means dead code that is still maintained and updated because whoever's

I think 'voodoo code' in this case means something a little bit more than 'dead code'. It means dead code that is still maintained and updated because whoever's working on it is unable to recognize that it's dead. I'm also not sure that it's sufficient for most people to just compare the code they produce to their peers. Part of being a skilled programmer is the experience and knowledge necessary to properly evaluate the quality of code. Inexperienced developers may find the work of more skilled developers to be confusing, in which case they might not be able to glean any useful insights from it, or they might consider it excessively fancy and obscure. On the other hand, the good code might be easy for even inexperienced developers to understand (I'd say that in many cases that's part of the definition of good code), in which case the subtleties that make it good might go unnoticed.