The inverse of this is also useful:

// Dear maintainer,

// The code which follows was hacked together under desperate pressure.

// It's not smart. // It's not doing anything really subtle. // It's the only thing we could get to work in the time.

// If you want to chuck it and replace it, you absolutely should.

Hey, that one I actually can replace with self-documenting code! Oh joy!

It's useful, until you realize you have this on 90% of your code.

That's when a full rebuild can be justified.

I'm doing that atm, but I think my predecessor lacked the humility to admit that his code was bad, which is how it went up to 150K of code that basically concatenates XML, converts it to JSON and concatenates HTML on the front-end from the result.

Not a bad idea.

My code would probably be better served by:

This place is a message… and part of a system of messages… pay attention to it!Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture.

This place is not a place of honor…no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here… nothing valued is here.

What is here is dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger.

The danger is in a particular location… it increases toward a center… the center of danger is here… of a particular size and shape, and below us.