[civilian]

100% agree. One of my friends, in her first software engineering role, was handed a binder from 1987 and told to update some things.

Other coworkers had interacted with the system a little, but not extensively. It was a bunch of C for (rock & ore) mining software. It was intimidating and it took time, but she cracked it, and then happily (& justifiably) bragged that she added features to code that had been written before she was born!

[AnimalMuppet]

I'd be proud if I were the original author, too. My code lived long enough that someone who wasn't even born when I wrote it was able to add features to it.