[spyspy]

On the flip side, a full rewrite is really the only way to surface and understand all of those edge cases. People seem to harp on the idea that rewrites are bad, but I find them to be a natural part of the SDLC. It's a way to refresh the mental model for the devs currently working on it, since the original dev(s) probably moved on long ago. Updating the tech or architecture itself is just a byproduct.

[majormajor]

That's an interesting take, and getting that context is valuable, but it seems like there really should be a way to do that that's less disruptive and destructive to "actually being able to deliver new features" than a full rewrite that stops the world for months or longer...