Good article, both in spirit and factually. One thing to add: the author talks about reviving a system as “slow and difficult process”, and it is. However, the

Good article, both in spirit and factually. One thing to add: the author talks about reviving a system as “slow and difficult process”, and it is. However, the concrete example described is not worthy of hand-wringing of this kind: a system that could have been built by a single competent engineer in 6 months (inevitably of alpha quality, at best), could be resurrected by a competent team of several programmers and brought to, say, beta quality, while keeping the lights on their alpha system on in how long? Let’s say, 9-12 months. No biggie, really. Most companies routinely discard man-years of programmer’s effort, so those 9-12 months are likely just a blip in the lifetime of that firm.