well summarized write up.

I am working on a 50 year old codebase which little documentation since "tHe COdE iS tHe ManUaL"...

its in the academic field although this does not mean that people took care about it.

and due to porting to newer language styles this thing is near impossible to get into.

I understand that times have changed much.

however to maintain this stuff progress has to be put on halt until a system is established to clean up this mess of 30 years of spaghetti code (assuming for 20 years it was alright)