> Huge disagree on this. Old code tend to be much more terrible because the tools were terrible.

I've looked at 1990s code in the Windows NT kernel. It was wonderful.

Oldest source file I went through was from 1993. Perfectly readable and understandable.

One of the best modern code bases I ever worked in didn't even have a linter setup. The principle dev reviewed every single commit and enforced a consistency across the code base that was better than what any tools ever could have done.