Discussion
"Programming is building a mental model. It is not mechanical code production. The shared mental model in developers' minds is the real product. A program is "living" only while the team understands this theory. When programmers leave, it becomes "dead". Without the original theory, new maintainers treat software as a black box, creating patchwork fixes that cause side effects and architectural decay."
Absolute truth.
Originally from Peter Naur's "Programming as Theory Building" (1985)
@SecondUniverse True for most dev people this. Paraphrasing one of my other comments on this topic, some sort of spaced repetition system of understanding of the systems we build is a dire need.
That sort of a thing is heavily discouraged in enterprise programming roles. I was shot down every single time for such thoughts.
@animesh I'm not sure that's true and I have a terrible memory 
I learned before design patterns were a thing, so I don't know design patterns.
Instead, I've learned them at a different level on countless projects over years, in different contexts.
With a single codebase then, I couldn't stand up and tell you about the mental model, but that doesn't mean I no longer know it. When I come back to old code, it takes a day maybe two, and then it's like The Matrix again.
@SecondUniverse
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@animesh That is my problem. I can't keep my own theory in my head. Any program I build becomes a black box to me.