On various projects, I've heard various people complain about
maintaining old/existing code. I've done my fair share of complaining myself, as
I'm sure whoever is reading this has as well. A co-worker and I were doing the
typical. I realized, I don't think I've ever witnessed someone talk about how
great an "old" piece of software is, even when talking about their own
software.

I don't want to be too cynical here, but it is interesting that
we focus on writing great software but never actually find "great legacy
  software". By legacy software, this includes code written even a few days ago.


I'd love to find some examples of code/software, that is say over a year
old, and the team agrees that it is excellent code. I'm not saying this doesn't
  exist, but by everyone's own complaints, it doesn't sound like anyone writes
  "good" software?