Comment by socalgal2
long lasting warts might be evidence that the software is backward compatible. It might also be evidence the software is full of footguns and ways to screw yourself.
I'm sure it's an unpopular opinion but sh/bash scripts suck. There are magic incantations all over and if you get one wrong then you've got code injection. We can't go back and fix it but we could either replace it, or update in some way so it it's easy to be safe and only one way to do things that "does the right and safe thing" always.
I don't think keeping unsafe by default is a good model and I think all of the daily headlines of people/companies/hospitals/airports/goverments being hacked in large part because we keep the warts.
I don’t know how you take the article OP wrote/posted and conflate it with security breaches.
Long lived shipping code is typically not aesthetically pleasing.