[gmjoe]

Exactly. The fault lies with the original author in not explaining the intent behind the function, why it is written in the way it is.

I've seen this kind of code time and again from coworkers who have the "code should be self-documenting" mentality, who refuse to put in comments explaining why they wrote a function a particular way. But what they think is self-documenting, very, very, very rarely is to others.