No comments in code i was asked to fix - none whatsoever

I've just recently finished just over a year's worth of fixing some seriously broken code (DB/Front end stuff) and it was completely devoid of comments.

To make things even trickier, whoever wrote it was a big fan of cryptic variable names which in no way described their purpose or function. What does a variable called (say) 'ip' mean? in this particular case it referred to an internal counter used for tracking how many items belonged to a pallet of goods. Not exactly intuitive.

My question is, is this normal? Were they just lazy? Or were they trying to hide something?

In my own code, I document everything from what I'm trying to achieve, what's tripped me up, how I'm feeling - basically down to the socks and undies I'm wearing on that particular day.

My tutor drummed into my head that: It's suprising what you can forget in a month, let alone a year, so document, document everything.

So anyway, I just wondered if this was the norm. Thanks for reading my mini rant. Now that I've fixed everything I'm back applying for the dole.

What I have tried:

Descriptive variable names, adding explanatory summarys to methods, doing my very best to create self-descriptive code

Tags: C#