>if it is code that must be maintained, then at some point the hair may need to be shaved; it simply cannot grow forever as the world moves on around it. the doma of "never rewrite" is silly without further context.
"Shaving" seems more close to refactoring & partial rewrite than starting from scratch. Which is what we are talking about.
Still, You make good points. Maybe, we should think of "restarting from scratch" the same way we do premature optimization - (1. don't do it. 2. Don't do it too early. 3. if you must do, measure first)
I think every developer dreams of rewriting from scratch because they hate how hacky and ugly their code is probably due to rushed deadlines and because it was just supposed to be an mvp. And they think about throwing it away and starting clean and doing it the 'proper way'. This imo is the wrong reason to start from scratch.
But if your technical debt is genuinely preventing your product from going where it needs to go or do its job. That is the right reason. Again you have to make the calculation whether the technical debt is greater than the cost of rewriting from scratch, re-opening old bugs and introducing new ones, breaking your customers workflow - they also invested a lot into your old program. How many times have you liked a program until 'the damn devs went and ruined a good thing' by 'fixing what wasn't broken'. Again, customers don't see or care about the code or technical debt. They just need to get their work done.
"Shaving" seems more close to refactoring & partial rewrite than starting from scratch. Which is what we are talking about.
Still, You make good points. Maybe, we should think of "restarting from scratch" the same way we do premature optimization - (1. don't do it. 2. Don't do it too early. 3. if you must do, measure first)
I think every developer dreams of rewriting from scratch because they hate how hacky and ugly their code is probably due to rushed deadlines and because it was just supposed to be an mvp. And they think about throwing it away and starting clean and doing it the 'proper way'. This imo is the wrong reason to start from scratch.
But if your technical debt is genuinely preventing your product from going where it needs to go or do its job. That is the right reason. Again you have to make the calculation whether the technical debt is greater than the cost of rewriting from scratch, re-opening old bugs and introducing new ones, breaking your customers workflow - they also invested a lot into your old program. How many times have you liked a program until 'the damn devs went and ruined a good thing' by 'fixing what wasn't broken'. Again, customers don't see or care about the code or technical debt. They just need to get their work done.