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by OccamsMirror 394 days ago
Anyone truly considering this should weigh up this post with the timeless wisdom in Joel Spolsky's seminal piece, 'Things You Should Never Do'[1]. Rewriting from scratch can often be a very costly mistake. Granted, it's not as simple as "never do this" but it's not a decision one should make lightly.

1: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-...
1 comments
dgfitz 394 days ago
Fifteen years ago I agreed with his point. Today I do not.
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chronid 393 days ago
The last rewrite I've seen completed (which was justified to a point as the previous system had some massive issues) took 3 years and burned down practically an entire org (multiple people left, some were managed out including two leads, the director was ejected after 18ish months) which was healthy-ish and productive before the rewrite. It's still causing operational pain and does not fully cover all edge cases.

I'm seeing another now in $current_job and I'm seeing similar symptoms (though the system being rewritten is far less important) and customers of the old system essentially abandoned to themselves and marketing and sales are scrambling to try to retain them.

Anecdotal experience is not so good. Rewriting a tiny component? Ok. Full on rewrite of a big system? I feel it's a bad idea and the wisdom holds true.

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kubanczyk 393 days ago
Spot on. It seems that OP is considering (1) a rewrite that can entirely fit into the mind of an engineerXYZ, and also (2) will be led by the same engineerXYZ, through executive empowerment.

I guess that in your case probably (1) did not hold. Or maybe (2) did not hold, or both.

OP's experiment doesn't prove at all, that an entire org can rewrite a complex app where 1&2 do not hold. Every indication we have is that org's executive functions perform abysmally for code writing (and rewriting). So exactly the point you are making. It would obviously mean that there is value in code, along the value in the org, once we get above the level of the value that conceptually fits into 1 head.

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RangerScience 393 days ago
IMHO, anecdotally, if you attempt a full rewrite under the same organizational conditions that resulted in code bad enough to warrant it...

...you're gonna get bad code again, or, as you say, worse. The impact of the organizational culture dwarfs everything else.

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