I am in short supply of time.

If this is really, really true: don't try rewrite anything excepting the exact requirements you've got. Just try to understand what's there, extend it, and blend in with it.

As you go, after you've had time to understand the code better and what exactly it does, write tests. Rewriting without taking the time hit to write tests is false economy. Every 10 minutes you save not writing tests can come back and cost you an hour, or maybe even a couple of days, debugging and maybe much more in lost customers when bugs make it to production.

Or... a complete rewrite. If you have to redo most of it, it will likely be easier than retooling the original in situ. But, again, without a full functional spec or test suite or both, this will bite you hard. Sometimes 10K lines of code can be compressed to a few hundred with judicious application of the stars of the CPAN but that assumes you know exactly what you're doing and what the code is doing. Good luck and come back often with technical questions if you've got them. Many monks here can pull apart seeming Gordian knots easily.

In reply to Re: Reading Someone's Program by Your Mother
in thread Reading Someone's Program by aartist

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