There's a time and place for everything. Firefox and Mac OS X are examples of successful rewrites. I've had some positive experiences with re-writing certain th

There's a time and place for everything. Firefox and Mac OS X are examples of successful rewrites. I've had some positive experiences with re-writing certain things from scratch. Not to downplay the issues Joel raised back in 2000, but if a product is tied to a technology that's limiting its effectiveness, and better alternatives have become available, a next-generation implementation bears consideration. I think companies that fail to iterate and evolve this way will ultimately stagnate.