I did some statistics on the code base and found that 90% of the code lines were duplicates, copy-pasted from other parts of the system. In other words, only 10% were pure, pristine code. Not only that, but the code itself was a complete mess with no internal structure of any kind. Almost every method was static. Even the constants were defined in several places, with different values sometimes. The largest C# file consisted of twenty thousands lines, and on top of that, the system contained thousands of SQL stored procedures with an average of a thousand lines of SQL code each. The database structure held thousands of de-normalized tables and hundreds of "project" databases, each with identical schema. I'm not kidding.
It was the definition of big-ball-of-mud.
Needless to say, the system was extremely fragile, buggy and incredible slow. It could only handle a couple of simultaneous web users. The slightest change required editing maybe 20 files. It had already amassed some three thousand (known) bugs, although that was only the tip of the iceberg. It was a never ending minefield littered with barbed wires, failed attempts, wrong turns and skulking, raving mad, overworked programmers on the edge of giving up.
I have seen the system evil programmers have to maintain when they die, and it's not pretty...
