> If your critical system is written in an ancient script that nobody can understand, and does no longer supported, and as a security risk, at some point it wi

> If your critical system is written in an ancient script that nobody can understand, and does no longer supported, and as a security risk, at some point it will simply stop working. And there will be nobody that can fix it. > Yes, rewrite may be painful, but if you can no longer find the people to support the old thing it may be necessary I agree, but we weren't talking about rewrites, we were talking about refactors. If you refactor some ancient old COBOL application, the result would be a new COBOL application. If you rewrite some ancient old COBOL application, the result would most probably not be a new COBOL application.