Cargo cult programming Memes

The perfect metaphor for modern programming doesn't exi— This is literally how 90% of codebases work. Some wizard cobbled together mysterious incantations from "Arcane Overflow" (aka Stack Overflow), has no idea why it works, but hey—it passes the tests! The best part is the "it isn't actually necessary anymore... but the whole spell falls apart without it" bit. Nothing screams legacy code like keeping random functions because removing them breaks everything for reasons nobody can explain. Somewhere in your codebase right now is a comment that says "// DON'T REMOVE THIS LINE OR EVERYTHING BREAKS"