So, in a metaphorical way, reading old philosophy isn't about reading a legacy code base. It's about reading the git history and project documentation.
Hmm, I'd say more like reading the (original) source code of git itself to learn about Linus and his coding"philosophy" [0] vs reading a modern tutorial about how to use git.
[0] I haven't done this so not putting any value prop on this specific example.
[0] I haven't done this so not putting any value prop on this specific example.