Poor/questionable [initial] architectural decisions at a codebase level don't mean that the end product doesn't work (WordPress IMO being a very good example of this -- famously crufty codebase but the product definitely does the job). Just means it's not _necessarily_ a great subject for an architectural breakdown.

There are many open source projects that are terrible codebases but have great support.

Example for me... lwIP. One of the worst APIs I’ve ever used, but it works damn near perfectly once you hack through it.

Maybe that says something. It certainly doesn’t make the code or behavior any easier to understand, though.

I guess that’s why many company’s are going with the “code is meant to be read, not written” thing

Until rather recently it took a PhD in computer science to draw a circle in gimp... I still love it though.