> Even if I wrote all the code, my understanding of how everything works and fits together decays.
Some understanding decays, but in my experience it never fully decays to the point of never having known how it worked.
My code from 3 years ago is more foreign to me than code I wrote yesterday, but if I need to I'll get back up to speed on it much quicker than I will on code someone else wrote that I never understood.
Even with the decay of time, remnants of the experience persist, roughly in the same way that if you get in really good shape and then allow yourself to fall out of shape, getting back into shape is difficult, but not as hard as it was the first time. Your nervous system has made adaptations the first time through that make running it back much easier even if you've let years pass.
Some understanding decays, but in my experience it never fully decays to the point of never having known how it worked.
My code from 3 years ago is more foreign to me than code I wrote yesterday, but if I need to I'll get back up to speed on it much quicker than I will on code someone else wrote that I never understood.
Even with the decay of time, remnants of the experience persist, roughly in the same way that if you get in really good shape and then allow yourself to fall out of shape, getting back into shape is difficult, but not as hard as it was the first time. Your nervous system has made adaptations the first time through that make running it back much easier even if you've let years pass.