Big turds often leaves refactors almost equal to Joels "V2 rewrites", continuous runnable general cleanups is often the first step (and yields surprising benefi

Big turds often leaves refactors almost equal to Joels "V2 rewrites", continuous runnable general cleanups is often the first step (and yields surprising benefits in general) then still runnable prep refactors that makes the bigger leaps smaller (temporarily increasing complexity so you really want them in just before embarking on the bigger stuff so it doesn't increase complexity in itself). That said, in your case it felt a bit like an organizational failure also. As you could read in Ingo's mail he had to start over after plenty of work put in, for him there wasn't any reputation damage because he seems to have had free reign to start this as he wished.