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Why we picked it This is the canonical warning against throwing away working code and rebuilding from scratch, told through Netscape's rewrite that handed years to competitors. Read it before you convince yourself the messy MVP needs a clean-slate v2: it names the exact trap you are about to walk into. Treat it as a starting point, not gospel, since sometimes a rewrite really is right, but the burden of proof is on you.
Things You Should Never Do, Part I
From Joel on Software by Joel Spolsky ~10 min read
- Old code that looks ugly is usually carrying years of hard-won bug fixes and edge-case knowledge you cannot see, and a rewrite silently throws all of it away.
- It is harder to read code than to write it, which is why the instinct to rebuild almost always feels stronger than it should.
- Most of what tempts you toward a rewrite (architecture, slow spots, cosmetic mess) can be fixed incrementally through refactoring instead.