With regards to standing on the shoulders of giants, the rational part of me wholeheartedly agrees, but the kid in me just wants to burn it all to the ground an

With regards to standing on the shoulders of giants, the rational part of me wholeheartedly agrees, but the kid in me just wants to burn it all to the ground and rebuild it from scratch. :) Of course, it is nearly impossible to rewrite things better because inevitably you hit one of these traps: not enough time/money, the bureaucracy that is attached to money, the "too many chefs" problem, or the inadequate supply of experienced/battle-hardened minds to put on such a project - i.e. people that have written compilers, operating systems, GUIs, etc - enough times over to know what they are doing.