[viscanti]

Being closed to the possibility of rewriting a project is one of the worst decisions advanced-intermediate engineers make. How much technical debt has accumulated? How many future features/changes need to be made? How long does it take just to maintain the current feature-set?

If a re-write saves more time than it takes, then it should be considered. If it takes you a week to implement something that should be done in a day, and you realize that you'll be doing lots of those things over the course of the next few years, it's probably worth considering a re-write. It's not a solution to every problem, and it's probably done more often than it's not, but there are certainly times when it pays to do it. It's easy to have simple rules that say don't do things. It's much harder to make the best decision for the business. Just because some businesses in the past have made the wrong decision with regards to re-writes doesn't mean it's always wrong.