> they never seem to quite acknowledge how bad legacy systems can be Isn't that the ground truth that everybody starts with though? My general perception is t

> they never seem to quite acknowledge how bad legacy systems can be Isn't that the ground truth that everybody starts with though? My general perception is that everybody "knows" that legacy systems are bad, hates them, and doesn't want to work with them. I view the article as attempting to moderate that base position and inject some caution by highlighting often-unforeseen costs to certain approaches to attempting to replace legacy code. I think the OP would respond to all the cases you're referring to by advocating either a full rewrite (if they really are as bad as your observations above), or leaving the code alone (if the cost of a full rewrite or carrying a partial rewrite is higher than the cost of living with the old code).