I know I wrote perfect, maintainable code that can easily live in my brain.
But when I go to work on it again a few months since I wrote it, it seems like some asshole stepped in and overwrote my beautiful code with a bunch of jumbly mish-mash and had the gall to overwrite the git commit history with it, using the exact same commit messages, and my own name!
I also got compliments of my code in the past.
I do try to make my code readable and avoid being clever. Basically my rule of thumb is that if I need to write a comment about block of code what it does, then that code is too complex.
But anyway, I recently found code that I wrote 15 years ago. And when looking at it actually makes me feel depressed. It looks like something I would write today so I don't think I got much better.
But yes, I do have to look over it again to understand how it works as I forgot everything.
Even my own codebases/config. management systems are difficult, if I haven't dealt with them in a while.
However, I am pretty good at understanding old stuff I did, mainly because I leave a legacy for myself.