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The reason to write code is to solve a problem. If the problem domain is complex, then the code to solve said problem will be inherently complex. He solved a problem.

Font rendering code is a nightmare because the problem is really damn hard. Font files are complex, and actual real world usage is even worse.

Any code that involves parsing old school binary file formats is going to look ugly to modern day developers who are used to JSON everything, even if the code is actually very well structured.

Even well-written code can be hard to understand -- practically impossible, even -- if what it's doing is sufficiently complex. Cryptography and certain areas of graphics have humbled me, for instance. I followed the flow, and I appreciated the comments, but I did not understand.

Any specific lines you can point to as examples in an open source repo?