> Sure, but you're acting under the premise that "if we just did it 'right' the first time, we wouldn't have this mess". I think you're right that every long-l

> Sure, but you're acting under the premise that "if we just did it 'right' the first time, we wouldn't have this mess". I think you're right that every long-lived code base will have warts. And I don't think that means that the original builders were wrong-headed. But if you've got a decades-old system that nobody understands anymore, you've got a huge liability. You can't ship features to compete, you can't fix bugs, you can't comply with new regulations. You can't even rewrite confidently because you don't know what the old system does. There must be things you can do as a code base ages to keep it maintainable, allow incremental rewrites, etc.