Wonderfully subtle comment in a thread on Hacker News about building software:
“I have also found that when I enter a new workplace, everything done before me was a mess of unwieldy, poorly documented and unstructured code. Worse, it uses an old, archaic platform that is long overdue for a complete overhaul.
Then when I arrive, I make everything logical, nice, structured and proper.
After I leave, once again the place falls prey to disorganized minds who take my work and mess it up for flashy new technologies that are not as reliable as what I had done.
For some reason, this keeps happening.”
A good reminder to empathize with those who preceded you and those who will follow.
p.s. - OP forgot to mention the times when you don’t touch your own code for a while and end up playing multiple roles in the scenario above: “Who wrote this junk!? Oh right… I did.”
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