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If something isn't broken, do not fix. I think part of it is that large companies can keep engineers happy by giving them rewrites. Otherwise, not enough projects to keep everyone entertained.



Well, the best architectured project I've ever worked on in Google was actually rewritten 4 times from scratch. I believe rewriting is always good for the project. Not always for business, though. Fortunately, Google had resources to allow rewrites to happen.

Rewrites also serve as thorough code review and security audit.


Were the previous ones not getting the job done? 4 rewrites over what time period?

I am more in the camp of "let's do something useful" than "let's rewrite this because previous guy didn't do it good, or it no longer meets our demands". Because whatever you do it will get rewritten again, and it's imho useful to resist the urge.

Ps: also a googler.




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