[epenn]

Resisting the knee-jerk urge to rewrite a piece of software from scratch is something that has taken me a while to master. I'm much more levelheaded about it now. I try to think through whether or not there is a legitimate reason for the rewrite. Sometimes that reason certainly exists, but I've found more often than not that doing so is overkill. It's a lesson that has certainly saved me a lot of time since and allows me to focus on more important tasks.

[Stwerner]

Out of curiosity, what would you say are some legitimate reasons for doing major rewrites? I'm currently going back and forth on whether or not a rewrite is a good idea, and would like to hear what some people would consider good reasons.

[cpeterso]

Joel ("On Software") Spolsky might say never. If you have a system that is smelly but working, then rewrites of individual subsystems lets you evolve the working system into something cleaner without any discontinuity of service.

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html

[Stwerner]

Yeah, I've read that before, and other articles like it. Does the feeling of 'this code sucks, needs rewritten' ever go away after inheriting an old, smelly, but working codebase?