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Is it better to start from scratch rather than refactoring?
(lemmy.sdf.org)
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In a way you're right - someone else already mentioned the uncommon-but-plausible situation where the original edge cases are no longer possible and don't need to be handled. Most engineering has "fat tails", where the rare exceptions are actually pretty common. The thing is, "it depends" doesn't convey very much. Do you have some examples you could add, maybe?
Unfortunately the work I’ve been involved in is all in a commercial setting and I don’t think it would behoove me to talk too much about it. One was a major replatforming of an enormous, global education platform. That succeeded but took 6 years, not 3. I’ve gone through major engine changes in various game studios; one of which was built from scratch, one which was kept up to date and had original GameCube code in it by the time we gave up on it and I’m in the middle of one right now, building a new platform for another education platform and refactoring a large VR platform. I wish I could detect a pattern of success - the only association I can find is with “patience”.