[justin_oaks]

I've heard such thoughts expressed as "Evolution, not Revolution". You evolve (refactor) your old app into the new one, rewriting parts of it at a time.

Several comments have already expressed that they've rewritten projects successfully. I've also evolved several projects successfully too. One of the benefits of the evolution approach is that when old bugs resurface, they're less likely to show up all at once since you only changed part of the application. Also it should be easy to compare the code with the bug to the previous code without the bug because it mostly similar.

There are times when an application is beyond repair and a rewrite is necessary, but I see those times as the exception rather than the norm.