> If you don’t fix it… and the code is working… what is the problem?
It may be very inefficient, for example. Works now, but may unintuitively slow down when dealing with workloads that looked very far-fetched at the time.
I have inherited a really nice C++ codebase from 1980s that contains warnings for Year 2038 problem and all sorts of other potential issues, and I can't thank those engineers enough. So many times I've dug into a problem or started implementing a new feature only to discover that someone had already thought of that and left useful pointers in comments.
Whatever version control or note-taking applications they might've used instead, I doubt I could even run or open their files 30+ years later.
It may be very inefficient, for example. Works now, but may unintuitively slow down when dealing with workloads that looked very far-fetched at the time.
I have inherited a really nice C++ codebase from 1980s that contains warnings for Year 2038 problem and all sorts of other potential issues, and I can't thank those engineers enough. So many times I've dug into a problem or started implementing a new feature only to discover that someone had already thought of that and left useful pointers in comments.
Whatever version control or note-taking applications they might've used instead, I doubt I could even run or open their files 30+ years later.