[sword-devel] checking in

[Will Thimbleby]

On 26 Jun 2005, at 8:27 am, Troy A. Griffitts wrote:

> I once reluctantly read an article about rewriting code from  
> scratch.  In the end I was convinced that it was in general a bad  
> idea.  I wish I could point to the article and may dig it up, but  
> his point that sticks in my mind goes something like: all  
> developers are, by nature, designers and always look at code and  
> think, what a mess, I could rewrite that faster than learn how that  
> works.  Code that has been around a long time has gone through  
> invaluable time of testing and fixing.  You may not understand why  
> things are done as they are, because you don't know all the  
> scenarios the code operates correctly under.  All the little tweaks  
> for X to work while not breaking Y are expressed in the code, but  
> not easily evident.  Rewriting code throws away all that knowledge  
> and experience.

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html