[lisasays]

Of course Joel was wildly hyperbolizing, to the point of absurdity.

Code gets re-written from scratch all the time, for perfectly legitimate reasons. As even Joel Spolsky knows. He just meant that you should be aware of the trade-off, and that most of the time, you probably don't want to re-write from scratch.

But "Never do X" sounds much catchier. And succeeded in getting the article shared and quoted infinitely and endlessly, to this very day.

Even though everyone knows it isn't, you know, actually literally true. Even Joel.

[jvans]

I don't think this is hyperbole, i completely agree with it as written