Rewriting code is often faster than understanding obtuse code written for requirements that never come.
I once encountered a 5k loc program designed to take the average of a series of Boolean values. The code had been designed such that the input data format could be changed etc etc. unfortunately, of the 5 metrics which could have ever been requested only 2 were implemented. It was to difficult to work with the code to implement the three others ( just finding where to implement them took 3 days).
Ultimately all the extra abstraction abstracted over the wrong things. The 5kloc project was replaced with a 100 line file that did exactly what was needed.
I once encountered a 5k loc program designed to take the average of a series of Boolean values. The code had been designed such that the input data format could be changed etc etc. unfortunately, of the 5 metrics which could have ever been requested only 2 were implemented. It was to difficult to work with the code to implement the three others ( just finding where to implement them took 3 days).
Ultimately all the extra abstraction abstracted over the wrong things. The 5kloc project was replaced with a 100 line file that did exactly what was needed.