I think you're claiming an overly strong interpretation of Joel's stance on rewrites, something like "new code is never better than old code." While that's kind

I think you're claiming an overly strong interpretation of Joel's stance on rewrites, something like "new code is never better than old code." While that's kind of what your quoted excerpt says, that's not what it means in-context. In-context, his point is pretty obviously (I think) more like "given a piece of code, it's never better to rewrite." His point is not that newer software can't come along and be better than old software. Rather, all other things being equal, rewriting is an inferior development choice.