On Thu, 2003-08-28 at 19:18, Colin Watson wrote: > On Thu, Aug 28, 2003 at 01:08:56PM -0700, Mark Ferlatte wrote: > > Ron Johnson said on Thu, Aug 28, 2003 at 02:16:22PM -0500: > > > With tight budgets and tight schedules, I've *never* seen a project > > > rewritten. > > > > Rewriting from scratch is dangerous anyway; you exchange all of the > > bugs you know about for a whole new set of bugs which you haven't > > discovered yet. Better to improve what you've got. This can result in > > a totally different codebase after a while, but at least you have been > > able to test and release along the way. > > Amen, brother. I spend a fair bit of my time in Debian trying to stop > people from rewriting things and getting them to fix existing code > instead. It's an uphill struggle: for some people rewriting from scratch > seems to be much sexier. > > I've seen maybe one or two occurrences where rewriting from scratch was > actually worth it. Before that's the case, the existing code has to be a > complete nightmare and you have to have a deadline to add some new > feature or other to it. It does happen, but it is (and should be) rare.
Unfortunately, if the fundamental design is Really Flawed, then incremental changes are impossible. Yet I also agree that rewriting swaps old bug for new. There's a Catch-22 sometimes. -- ----------------------------------------------------------------- Ron Johnson, Jr. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Jefferson, LA USA "Vanity, my favorite sin." Larry/John/Satan, "The Devil's Advocate" -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
