That's beautiful. Thanks for sharing. It reminds of a similar experience I had.
A few years back one of the systems I ended up inheriting stopped working on January 1st. As most people, I had taken the day off, but my manager called me to fix the issue in prod.
After much researching, I found out the assembly causing the issue. Similarly, the original dev had left and the source code was lost. So I used ildasm and found out the year was hardcoded. I patched the binary and went home.
A few years back one of the systems I ended up inheriting stopped working on January 1st. As most people, I had taken the day off, but my manager called me to fix the issue in prod.
After much researching, I found out the assembly causing the issue. Similarly, the original dev had left and the source code was lost. So I used ildasm and found out the year was hardcoded. I patched the binary and went home.
Rest in Peace, Eric.