Comment You Need The Refactoring Book (Score 1) 403
If you're dealing with scary code and you havn't read "Refactoring - Improving the Design of Existing Code" by Martin Fowler then do yourself a favour and get this book, it' great!
The Refactoring book is a catalog of techniques for reworking code. All of the examples are in Java but apply equally to C++ (I'm a C++ programmer myself.) In addition the the catalog of refactorings this book presents an attitude towards dealing with an existing body of code which is really inspiring.
I used to think of my existing code base as frozen, difficult to maintain and change - but it can be much more dynamic than that. Martin Fowler promotes the idea of refactoring as you go - if you're implementing a feature and it dosn't really fit with the existing design, change the design, then implement the feature. Working incrementally like this you can rapidly move towards making things much less scary. Once you realise that there is light at the end of the tunnel you will make freinds with your code again.
