> programmed with $X in a hot summer night in the late 90s and he hasn't had a look at $X ever since

Oh, I’m all in agreement with this but there’s another side to this:

Programmer worked with a product from the company back in ‘00 enough to know it is a piece of shit and the whole company culture is bullshit and band-aid fixes. They know they can still find similar bugs to the ones they reported, just using the new shiny API that got tacked on.