I don't think I'll ever understand how someone can complain about a legacy code base in one breath, and then justify a bad design with "that's how the system does it everywhere else" in the next.

I find it has to be sometimes when you have a tight deadline, bad requirements and fixing it will take longer then you have to spend on the project. In the non Silicon Valley corporate world this is very common. I tend to think of the new code as legacy code sense it is forced by the existing code base.

I've been forced multiple times to make the judgement call.