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    OP says "no, I can't get in touch with authors". Commented Apr 5, 2017 at 14:45
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    I can't get in touch with authors nor there is any documentation. Commented Apr 5, 2017 at 15:12
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    @kukis: You can't contact the authors, any domain experts, and can't find any emails / wiki / docs / test cases pertaining to the code in question? Well, then it's a full-blown research project in software archeology, not a simple refactoring task. Commented Apr 5, 2017 at 18:55
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    It's not unusual that the code is old and the authors have left. If they've ended up working for a competitor then discussing it may violate someone's NDA. In a few cases the authors are permanently unavailable: you can't ask Phil Katz about PKzip because he died years ago. Commented Apr 6, 2017 at 8:57
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    If you replace "finding the author" with "understanding what problem the code solved" then this is the best answer. Sometimes these bits of code are the least horrible solution to bugs that took weeks or months of work to find and track down and deal with, often bugs that normal kinds of unit testing can't find. (Though sometimes they are the result of programmers who didn't know what they're doing. Your first task is to understand which it is) Commented Apr 11, 2017 at 18:17