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I disagree. The older the code is, the more hands it's been through, which generally means it's stronger, hardened code. Each `if` statement added to the method

I disagree. The older the code is, the more hands it's been through, which generally means it's stronger, hardened code. Each `if` statement added to the method is an if statement to catch a specific bug or esoteric business requirement. If a rewrite happens, all that context is lost and the software is generally worse for it. That being said, I agree that maintaining legacy systems is far from fun.

smaudet 3y ago
> If a rewrite happens, all that context is lost and the software is generally worse for it. Unless you have a strong test suite which tests the absence of those bugs. OFC you can never prove the absence of an issue just the continued functionality of your codebase, but re-writes are often prompted by weird "in-between" functionality becoming the norm (or slow/buggy behavior). Of course a lot of test suites are of dubious quality/many devs have no idea what a good test suite looks like (usually unit tests are some combination of throw-away/waste-of-time, acceptance tests are mostly happy-path and due to recent trends integration tests are all but non-existent). But in theory, re-writes are fine when you do have a test-suite. Even with a bad one, you learn what areas of the application were never properly tested and have opportunities to write good tests.