Doing emergency surgery on a code base and not knowing how many holes are left is likely to leave more rabbit holes than a rewrite. Otherwise I agree with you.

Doing emergency surgery on a code base and not knowing how many holes are left is likely to leave more rabbit holes than a rewrite. Otherwise I agree with you. Rewrites are tricky. And the second system is particularly dangerous. But then it gets better - the third system tends to be a lot better than either of the first two.