[stcredzero]

I also thing it is vastly overstated how difficult it is to incrementally refactor a project which is "fucked". It's always possible to break it into smaller pieces, and gradually improve the codebase until it is manageable and easy to work with.

What if there's no automated testing worth a damn, and the penalty for a bug is very high? Been there, done that, and I have to say, you don't ever want to stay there!