Have you ever inherited a really shitty code base and what did you do about it?

Yes, several times. I rewrote it in its entirety every time.

I'm actually contemplating rewriting it from scratch cause what I've inherited doesn't even run.

The bits and pieces that I can I rewrite them from scratch, the others I just use adapters/bridges to the older API

Worked on top of the shitty codebase and architecture and made it less shitty one step at a time, but never really making it not shitty because that's most likely impossible 😅

Try not to cry.
Cry a lot.

Yes. All the time 😢
You focus on a single piece of functionality or feature and rewrite it.

Slowly you move across the entire project and get it to a point you feel remotely proud off. It’s along journey and no one will respect it as nothing has changed “technically” but you will feel a great sense of achievement at the end of it.

@M1sf3t 🤣. But I'm slightly nervous since it is my first job as a junior dev on this start up and it looks like I'll be the only one working with the code base.

You gradually rewrite it, one piece of functionality at a time, adding unit tests as you go. You continue this until you move onto another project. Then a new dev takes over, decides the entire code base is shit, and starts rewriting your rewrites. And so it goes on, forever and ever.

@M1sf3t @Robinha circle of life eh

Got the same shit over here, rewriting every module after module as soon as I have to touch them. Apparently there's no other way since the product is already in production and rewriting everything at once would easily break a lot

do some bullshit refactor, abandon it halfway through? start another refactor, leave it worse than how you received it
also cry, I adhere to the crying