How to orient yourself in an unfamiliar codebase — and how Claude Code can help you find your footing without losing your judgment
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Such a story quality! This is so true, I have a real work example, because I work in TCS, TCS delegate us to a company A. Company A sell their programs to (n) other company globe scale which is also use a (m) partners datas. I manage a 5 legacy code, which is written by a develeopers 7 years ago and left the company. So I even not saw that developers, and KT session is more than A company stories instead a hard fact about the codes.
So in that case we found ourself in a situation when need to build and run a really legacy codbase where every mistace was happend which can be made. A best way to help LLM to analyze codebase parts. But that is not enough, also need to tell to the LLM the whole program running codebase, which different code are communicate.
This is around 1 year refactoring story where we need to be maintanance to run this codes on globe scale, and just a small parts can be reworked at once.
wow! one year of refactoring! thanks Peter. yeah it is no easy thing working on inherited code. cheers! ✨❤
Great tips again. Thanks Aaron
I am currently at a very similar position and i will certainly take these as an advice and try to apply.
Additionally, what i can say humbly,
I am a fan of excalidraw and drawio tools, specifically taking notes and drawing the functions, architecture, component structure etc. This helps me a lot, even if i am the one who builds / designs the system.
Hi Alptekin — really glad it's useful at exactly the right moment! And excellent point on Excalidraw and draw.io — visual mapping of functions and architecture is a natural extension of the map pass. Sometimes getting it out of your head and onto a canvas, even roughly, clarifies things that reading alone never does. Thanks for sharing that — it's a great addition to the toolkit. Good luck with the codebase! ❤🙏🌹
Treating Claude Code's output as a hypothesis rather than a verdict is the key insight here. Reading tests as documentation and mining commit history for decision context are habits most developers skip entirely. This reframes AI assistance as a thinking tool, not a shortcut
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Inheriting someone else’s codebase can feel overwhelming at first. I’ve learned the hard way that starting with the structure and commit history saves a lot of time later. Tools like Claude can help map things out, but you still need to verify everything yourself. The idea of making a “map pass” before reading deeply is a really useful reminder.
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@aaron_rose_0787cc8b4775a0
Excellent article! Useful insights and engaging!
I'm definitely reading the earlier parts and will keep an eye out for the upcoming ones.
It is reassuring to see high quality content in the see of AI slop.
Aaron, how much did AI help with this article? With the story and the insights?
Hi Jinal!
Thanks for reading and for the kind words.
AI is my writing partner all the way. I have a long background going back to the 80s in software dev, training, tech writing — and fiction writing! So I thought it was finally time to combine the technical with the narrative storytelling.
AI is hugely important to the process — sometimes first drafts, sometimes not, SME reviews for sure. But the setting, the characters, their personalities, the story arc — all mine.
Cheers! ☘🌹❤
I love how you're using a fictional story as a way to teach these patterns. Reminds me of some of my favorite books by Patrick Lencioni.
To be mentioned in the same chat with Patrick Lencioni is a real compliment. Thank you, Swift. That means a lot. 🙏❤
This is such an important point. AI can generate code, but the real skill is still in understanding whether the solution is actually correct. If a developer can’t read and reason about the code that AI produces, that’s where problems start. Without a doubt, AI can speed things up, but judgment and responsibility still belong to the developer.
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Created an account to say how much i am appreciating this series. I retired 5 years ago, so I missed out on implementing AI in my professional workflows, but I still build playpen / personal projects.
Martin — you created an account just to leave this note, which honestly made my day. Thank you. 🙏
Retirement doesn't disqualify you from having a voice in this space — if anything, 'I built this for fun, here's what I learned' is one of the most refreshing things to read on dev.to. No deadlines, no stakeholders, no politics. Just someone who codes because they like it.
The playpen projects you're describing? Those are articles waiting to happen. Seriously consider writing a few up for dev.to. The community here responds well to that kind of fun exploration. Cheers mate ❤✨
Great article, Aaron! I should try the claude one day.
Really insightful, thanks for sharing!
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Really well written. Bookmarked for future reference.
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