Thank you for the initial posting, so much true. Brook's comment is a bit old and there usually evolve things to adress issues: His integrated database system is: The web, (project-)wikis, issue tracking, version control, (discussion&help-)forums, the code and comments in code. Anyways, it's true: Reading code often is a nightmare... but at least for me also because of over-abstraction/complication (done by IT guys/colleagues) and misdevelopments/trends/hypes (mainly done by the IT industry).