That can also lead to a hell of a lot of analysis paralysis, however.
I know because I share your approach. Having worked with a great many legacy / inherited systems, most with little or no documentation, and rarely with much in the way of contact with the system designer, it's a bit of an occupational hazard.
Sometimes you've just got to blow down the fences to see what happens. Sometimes it's nothing, sometimes it's the end of the world.
Fortunately, in technology, resurrecting fences is generally fairly straightforward, but not always.
That said, the worst fences are the ones you take down without realizing they were there ... which turn out to be critical.
I know because I share your approach. Having worked with a great many legacy / inherited systems, most with little or no documentation, and rarely with much in the way of contact with the system designer, it's a bit of an occupational hazard.
Sometimes you've just got to blow down the fences to see what happens. Sometimes it's nothing, sometimes it's the end of the world.
Fortunately, in technology, resurrecting fences is generally fairly straightforward, but not always.
That said, the worst fences are the ones you take down without realizing they were there ... which turn out to be critical.