I inherited some Python scripts that pulled data from various sources and assembled web pages to present a coherent view of all of the data. These scripts were

I inherited some Python scripts that pulled data from various sources and assembled web pages to present a coherent view of all of the data. These scripts were very brittle, and slightly malformed data could cause them to fail entirely. After about a year of maintaining these old scripts, one of the data sources got replaced with a shiny new database system, requiring a major rewrite to the scripts. So I just started over from scratch. Having seen the problems running and maintaining the old ones, I made numerous better design decisions, resulting in far more robust scripts, which are (I think) much more easily maintained. But indeed, my predecessor was no fool. His scripts likely grew and grew and grew until they were a pile of hard to maintain code. I doubt that he himself would have advocated their design, but he just didn't find time / value toward rewriting them. I only rewrote them because I was forced to. And I'm sure that my future successor could improve upon what I've done. For that matter, I myself could improve upon what I've done, but hey, it works well enough, and I'd be better off spending time on other things...