The biggest problem with rewrites is that you need someone who understands how the old system works, and why it works that way. Sometimes there are good reason

The biggest problem with rewrites is that you need someone who understands how the old system works, and why it works that way. Sometimes there are good reasons for why something is a mess, that were the result of long iterations over customer requirements. And sometimes things are just a mess, because. If you are walking into a codebase cold, you don't know which is which, without doing a lot of archeology - assuming, of course, that more than potsherds of that train of cognition is left buried in the commit messages, JIRA tickets, and email archives you have access to.