I have been in the place of advocating ‘throw it away and start again’ several times. Sometimes it is required, when the code is fundamentally flawed, when the refactoring effort would be longer than the rewrite. But, I always worry.
I have never had a ‘soundbyte’ to define my worry, but now I do…
‘Warty but Battle Scarred’
Some code is ugly, horribly structured and deeply flawed, but it has the survivors advantage. It’s ‘been around’. And it is still here.
This blog post identifies my worrys perfectly.
The P.G. Wodehouse Method Of Refactoring
Wonderfully put. I will be following this guy.