A summer re-run for you: Joel on Software from June of 2000:
There’s a subtle reason that programmers always want to throw away the code and start over.
Good reading. A great deal of my job is working with clients and
pre-existing code bases. From the many folks I’ve worked with, I’ve
learned that my tolerance level for Other People’s Code (OPC) is much
higher than most. They shipped it, it works, well, mostly, it
paid for the ir kids orthodonture, and clients are using it to make
money. There’s a lot of good in there.