pietrrrek

I started working (part time as a student) at this small [1] company back in April when the virus just hit which lead to a rocky introduction to the systems that are in place. The other developer is going into retirement in about two months and, thus far, the company has had trouble finding an appropriate replacement.

The system is a large website built with AngularJS and SailsJS. The codebase is very large (at least in my unexperienced eyes) which would not be an issue had it been properly documented, most components do not have a single comment in them (except for code which has been commented out) and also lack any external documentation. To add on to the mess, the code style is also not very reader friendly (cryptic variable names, unnamed constants etc.).

I see the fact that the above mentioned employee is going into retirement as an opportunity to "do things right" and start over by rewriting/porting the website, writing proper documentation along the way, and upgrading certain technologies (e.g. JS -> TS and SVN -> Git) but I feel that I'm in way over my head. I'm about to finish my Bachelors this summer and plan on starting on a Masters immediately.

I feel competent enough in writing software but not in creating a feasible architecture for such a large project, so my question is; how should I proceed? I think that the changes that I've come up with would be a net positive for the company and would make the life of future developers at the company easier (that is if the implementation is good enough). Could you point me to any ressources that might be of help in my situation?

[1] There are no more than 4 IT employees where only I and another one are developers