You know, I haven't worked on that much software, and I've run into situations I at first thought impossible often enough that your comment just makes me laugh. :P

Unlikely? Surprising? Insane? Sure. But never call something impossible unless you can not only write down a formal proof for it but also verify your assumptions.

Unlikely, I would go with. It's unlikely that it couldn't be done. Based on the level of understanding in that thread, I'm not terribly surprised.

As other people are saying, maybe the original author made changes to the external dependencies he pulled in. Or maybe he's just bullshitting and indeed the code may have never worked. Or, sure, maybe the people trying to reconstruct the application went about it entirely the wrong way, like you suggest. It's just curious that you'd instantly pick the least charitable interpretation.