Some developers seem to enjoy making their code obscenely difficult to understand, either because it actually makes sense to them that way, or because it makes them feel smarter.

Be wary about this mindset. This type of explanation sets you up for conflicts with existing developers. Several times I’ve seen developers coming into a team and complain about the code, creating conflicts that can last the entire working relationship for no good reason.

Much of the time the people who constantly work with code are already aware of the problems and may not be happy with it, but there’s no time or big benefit in improving working code. Or it’s complicated for good reasons which may not be immediately apparent. (ie. inherent complexity).

Here are a couple of benign reasons which probably will serve you much better.

1. It’s much more difficult and time consuming to make code that is easy to understand. Even in open source, there’s a limited amount of time to spend on any particular thing. This explanation is like a variation of Twain’s “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”, or more abrasively Hanlon’s razor “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity time pressure”.

2. When writing the code, the developer has the entire context of his thought process available. You don’t have that, and that’s also the reason why your own code can make no sense a while later. Also it’s just much harder to read code than to write it.

Yeah. Everything depends on the complexity of the product, but it’s just as likely that it’s the new CTO and his team that gets canned when they get bogged down in the details and the costs start racking up.