The best systems I've created came from iteratively experimenting with the language / API / whatever. Build something for the sake of learning, throw it away, b

The best systems I've created came from iteratively experimenting with the language / API / whatever. Build something for the sake of learning, throw it away, build another experiment to learn, throw it away, take a shot at the real thing, throw it away, etc. It starts to feel like if you rewrite and think about the problem enough you'll eventually reach a point where you can write or rewrite the whole system in a week. Which leads me to conclude: Systems that can be rewritten should not be rewritten. Systems that cannot be rewritten should be rewritten. It's not quite true (not in all circumstances), but it's close. I think most enterprise / pile-of-business-rules software falls into the latter category, those systems cannot be rewritten, but they should be.