I don't believe in rewrites. But I believe in the evolution of the understanding, what a system is supposed to do and how to do it. A customer might have a lof

I don't believe in rewrites. But I believe in the evolution of the understanding, what a system is supposed to do and how to do it. A customer might have a lofty web-scale vision, the first version is built with all scaling and no maintenance in mind. You are then faced with a decision: carry along the visionary nightmare and get almost no real work done, because the system itself is in the way, or rewrite the system with a fresh, minimal approach, focusing on a valuable target. The point being: Software requirements evolve and sometimes, writing a first version of the software is the spec itself. Just as with specs, you can try to scavenge all good things from the previous version for the next one - and actually getting better over time, despite being in a rewrite mode.