There are a couple of common themes when trying to quickly become familiar with a large code base. Such code bases are not necessarily well-documented, their documentation may be incorrect or out of date, their structuring may not lend itself to easy analysis, their original authors may not be available, they may not no tests, and they may be difficult to actually run.

This talk will try to present some practical strategies for what to do when inheriting a large code base, focusing on what productive steps can be done by someone inheriting such a code base and what steps the original authors could have taken to improve their ability to onboard new coders.