I think it's perfectly natural to want to articulate what you're working on in the context of your understanding. But don't do that because your context is often very narrow. Perhaps you don't see the big picture.


It took me many years to resist the temptation to rewrite the code I maintained. As many others have stated, the real problem is reading and understanding the logic, the context in which it was written, and the intended requirements if, as is often the case, there is no documentation. This is especially problematic for legacy projects where literally dozens of developers have worked for many years, especially in environments with high staff turnover.