I had a coworker come to my desk one day, years ago. "Why did you add all that duplicated code to that file??" Huh? Oh, I didn't 'add' that duplication. I took two long files by two different authors, changed them to use the same white space, variable names, comment style and organization strategy. That's all I did. I didn't have the time at that moment to take the next step.
He came back four hours later and said that he couldn't stand it and he had refactored the code and fixed/written some tests.
Perfect. I learned long ago that there are ways you can start cleaning that will induce (some) others to participate.
He spent hours writing tests while I was working on an adjacent part of the code that had worse bugs in it. The work got done and a big piece of the code (this was a project I supported but didn't maintain) didn't, in the end, have my edit history all over it.
He came back four hours later and said that he couldn't stand it and he had refactored the code and fixed/written some tests.
Perfect. I learned long ago that there are ways you can start cleaning that will induce (some) others to participate.
He spent hours writing tests while I was working on an adjacent part of the code that had worse bugs in it. The work got done and a big piece of the code (this was a project I supported but didn't maintain) didn't, in the end, have my edit history all over it.