[chipsy]

The more you get exposed to other people's code, the less likely you are to dismiss it as bad immediately. Your first impressions are built upon what styles of coding you're already familiar with, and aren't to be trusted as an objective measure of whether the code is maintainable. In many cases, what you might think is a good practice is really just a fashionable one, and holds little engineering value when examined carefully.

After enough projects, you get used to navigating codebases that are layered with multiple styles and grungy bits from years of effort. At that point, you have some hope of knowing what can and can't be maintained.