[atticmanatee]

So much this. I started a new job in a company that is redesigning the product, but instead of a complete rewrite, managers decided it was best to keep as much as possible from the previous iteration (it's an iOS app).

We're getting close to release, so we have less pressing bugs and no new features to implement, so myself and a team mate decided to take a week to perhaps refactor some of the code and update it to Swift. After said week we reach the conclusion that management made the right decision: The written code handled so many edge cases that if we were to rewrite it, even converting from objc to swift could ignore some edge cases.

[Psyladine]

Joel couldn't have said it better himself.

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-...

[cjfd]

The point is well taken. Gradually refactoring things is generally a much better and safer road to take. I think it could have been said better, though. 'When programmers say that their code is a holy mess (as they always do) ...' encourages to not take said programmers seriously. And, actually, it not always is a mess. The current code base I am working in, which was largely not written by me, is not something I would call a mess. It is generally not bad despite things that could still be improved in various places. In particular, there are functions that are too long in some places and some things could have been done simpler and in other places there is a bit much boilerplate code but generally it is not bad.

[bequestry]

Course, dont link that to a team that's spent 2 years recreating a piece of software from scratch; from personal experience, it makes office life awkward. Comparing someones project to netscape wont win you any friends