One of my developers and I are having a big debate about whether it is better to rewrite from scratch or incrementally upgrade an poorly coded app.
He really wants to rewrite it because it is poorly coded and convoluted to understand. It would be more fun for him and easier to get started doing his own thing.
I want to incrementally improve on the system we currently have because a lot of very hard problems have already been solved and very specific structures built into the business logic that I want to keep.
I sent him Joel Spolsky’s article on how it is never a good idea to rewrite. He sent me the Basecamp founder’s article on when you do want to start from scratch.
I am still pretty set on just upgrading the current app rather than doing a full rewrite.