[scottyallen]

Yes, rewriting from scratch is considered bad. However, rewriting from scratch isn't the only way to improve a codebase. It's also possible to refactor it gradually, making a series of smaller changes rather than on big change. This has a bunch of benefits:

- It preserves all the built up knowledge encoded in your codebase, as you're never throwing away everything and starting over.

- It makes it possible to continue feature development during the refactor. Often with big ground up rewrites, it's necessary to declare a feature freeze, often for months at a time. Otherwise, the team that's doing the rewrite is constantly trying to play catch up to the newly developed features.

- It can be done gradually over time, which decreases the investment necessary to start seeing some gains.

Many people shy away from incremental refactoring when it comes to making large scale changes to a code base. They seem messy, expensive, and time consuming. And guess what? They are. But a ground up rewrite will generally be even messier, more expensive, and in the long run, more time consuming.