[wolfgke]

> How often do you look at some code and think "an idiot wrote this", and then realise you're looking at your own code?

Actually never. The reverse actually happened: I looked at some code and thought "a wizard must have written this", and then realised I am looking at my own code. :-)

No, seriously: I could immediatelly reconstruct my intentions that I had for code that I wrote 15 years ago and never touched afterwards. For this reconstruction process, the emotions that went into the code lines provide a strong mnemonic. This is also the reason why I actually need very few comments in my own code if it is just for me (of course, if other authors want to contribute, these are very important - but in this case, I prefer to ask them directly what kind of guidance they actually need).

What is much harder is to get into a foreign codebase. Even if it is of high quality (it often isn't), it takes a lot of time to get deeply into the thought process on which the original authors based their code structure.