When to give in and start The Big Rewrite?

Posted by John Cromartie on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by John Cromartie
Published on 2010-05-28T20:04:00Z Indexed on 2010/05/28 20:12 UTC
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project-management

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Development

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code-review

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rewrite

I've had my share of projects where the first thing I think is "let's just rewrite it in ." Everybody feels the urge at some point. In fact, I think I've had the urge to rewrite pretty much every project I've ever been on.

However, it is accepted wisdom that a total rewrite is generally a bad idea. The question is: when do you look at a project and say: "OK, it's time to start over."

What sort of metrics or examples can you cite of where a rewrite was truly necessary? How bad does the code have to be? How old can a project get before there too much invested?

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