Could be worse. Imagine a situation where you have to work with an old Java code base, where there is a lot work arounds that had sense ten years ago but not any more, and you are using obsolete library versions like Hibernate 2. Add that you can find similar functionality made on totally different ways. Add that you can find abuse of some programming patterns. Add that you have your own XML based framework where you end doing XML based programming, and not sane way of debugging it except doing the equivalent of debug with "print("CACA"); return -1". Add that for some operations, the java code must do the same stuff that does a heavy client wrote on Visual Basic 6 that works directly against the same database. Finally add that the database design isn't the best (BNF form ? What are you talking? )and that you are stuck on using a internal tool that does the same thing that Liquid base, but worse, and it's based on some old abandoned Apache libs that no body knows well how are working or how we modify. At least, we know that we have a problem and where are trying to fix it.

And this is my diary work.

PD: I have a friend that lives on a worse situation, where they have an application based on Java 1.5 applets, with bad or not existent documentation, and nobody knows how works internally.