I agree rewrites are generally not productive unless the original system is so far gone that it makes sense to start over.. but that's actually very rare. The

I agree rewrites are generally not productive unless the original system is so far gone that it makes sense to start over.. but that's actually very rare. The thing I think is absolutely ridiculous is when organizations can't figure out how to get work done which improves the performance (cost, efficiency, speed, etc) of their existing features. "Prove to me it has {financial, customer, etc} impact" is just how managers who care about nothing other than rolling out new features prevent the work from being done. It makes sense, they get promoted when their underlings deliver some splashy new thing. But it's an incredibly stupid way to build software. If the thing was worth building in the first place, surely it's worth making it good, right?