"WE RAN OUT OF COLUMNS" - THE BEST, WORST CODEBASE

Summary from the TLDR Web Dev newsletter

This is the story of a massive, poorly designed legacy codebase with a chaotic database structure, including a table with a single column and row used for generating IDs and a manually-updated calendar table. The codebase itself was a mishmash of technologies, with a mix of VB and C#, various JavaScript frameworks, and even a shipping manager built in a weekend by a lone developer. Despite its flaws, developers found the chaotic nature of the system freeing, as they were forced to create isolated, independent solutions within the larger mess.