[skanga]

You are right. But IMO you're still missing his main point. His thesis is in that case, to rewrite ONLY THE REALLY BAD CODE.

There is not team that is 100% bad so you don't need a full rewrite of 100% of the code base.

[bombcar]

That's exactly it - really bad code can be refactored piece by piece.

What people rewrite is not really bad code, it's just middling annoying muck code.