[belthesar]

This harkens back to Chesterton’s Fence. It’s always worthwhile to interrogate why things were done the way they were, especially when first coming onto a project. Knowing the why of a decision is essential to understanding if and how it should be changed. Especially if the reason is “this is what we had the time and knowledge to do at the time.”

[lmm]

> It’s always worthwhile to interrogate why things were done the way they were

It really isn't. A lot of the time you end up spending a lot of effort to understand something that was dumb to start with and has been dumb ever since. Something like the bullshit asymmetry principle applies - any idiot can take 5 minutes to write a line of code that will baffle a team of experts for hours. (I've done so often enough myself).

[darepublic]

The people who have those answers have long gone. The only person left is a project manager who tells you it's up to you to figure it out. After you make a change in production they will come to you with questions after a few months, just when you assumed things must have gone well