How to save my sanity while maintaining spaghetti code [closed]

Answer 1

Take the best of both. Organize your project into logical pieces, preferably using a reverse engineered UML class diagram, and see where the interconnections are. Anything that is loosly connected is ideal for a refactor. In any downtime, inspect the strong connections as well and see which groups can be completely split off into separate modules with the fewest changes. Figure out whats really going on at a high level before just rewriting the whole thing.

Answer 2

Well, maybe this just fits in my case, but here it goes:

Taking into account all suggests above, if i were going to work on a legacy code for a long time, i would be cleaning up the dirty code, very smooth, so i wouldn't break it, if don't i won't bother

Answer 3

While I've never done this myself, the approach makes a lot of sense. Write boatloads of tests around the existing exposed interface to make sure the functionality does not change when you go in and refactor the dickens of the implementation. This will ensure that any refactoring doesn't change how the app functions.