I must admit that my more recent, positive experiences are only possible due to my accumulated understanding of my dependency chain and toolkit. I work on multiple things, but my largest, indefinitely-running one has only a single dependency...but it's a truly beastly, poorly documented enterprise system. It took me almost 2 years before I properly understood the system's intended usage, interfaces, intents, bugs, and pitfalls.

The JavaDocs are awesome in their uselessness:

  /**
   * Sets the Wimbulator.
   *
   * @param wimbulator
   *     the Wimbulator to set
   * @param identifier
   *     the identifier to use
   * @param flags
   *     flags
   * @param legacy
   *     used to apply legacy
  */
  public void setWimbulator(Wimbulator wimbulator, String identifier, long flags, boolean legacy);