I know but you have to understand, Joel makes excellent points, but if most of the systems are written in COBOL it makes them hard to extend over time. We're t

I know but you have to understand, Joel makes excellent points, but if most of the systems are written in COBOL it makes them hard to extend over time. We're talking about software from 1984 in some cases although it's all littered with security holes, bad interfaces and slow response times. In the case of NY, I could agree with you, but I would say that the problem was significantly overcomplicated. There are better systems that could be used to deliver something like this. I think that, yes, sometimes you do need to do a top-down rewrite, especially when everything is wrong. I do agree with your point that the NY incident is likely attributable to poor software design, but I disagree with the conclusion that any rewrite would suffer from the same malady.