Too Long; Didn't Read
A lot of your day-to-day job will consist of maintaining a legacy codebase. A project you inherit in the real world will probably be in a much worse state. Skim the code, dive into the code and dive into it a little bit. Assess the state of the documentation for the project and make sure it’s updated regularly. Figure out the building process and the deployment process. Establish a smokeall test engine to see if an old engine works without burning.