I am doing some maintenance on an ASP.NET app. The app is split into 3 tiers and is extremely object-oriented. I wanted to see the logic used when added line items to a detail section, so I set a breakpoint in the Page_Load event. To help understand the flow, I closed all open documents in my IDE except for this webform and its code page.

About 250 Step Into's later, I hit my first call to the DAL. There are now about 40 files open that I had to step through. There's no real magic going on here... just a simple call to the database and displaying records. It probably could have been done in under 50 lines. I still haven't answered my initial question.

Is a situation like this normal in the real world, or did the developer before me have way too much time on his hands to program (and not enough to document)?

When does sophisticated and powerful code cross the "not easy to maintain" line?

I usually try not to criticize other people's code as I know I have a lot to learn yet, and I have learned a lot from this previous developer, but I have spent way too much time trying to fix a few small issues.