JoelSpolsky says
“don't do it”.
Peter Naur Programming as theory building [Naur, Peter, “Programming as theory building,” Microprocessing and Microprogramming, 15: 253-261, 1985, reprinted in Computing: A Human Activity, (NY: Addison-Wesley, ACM Press, 1992), pp. 37-49.] argues for rewriting.
c2wiki info.
Abstract of the essay from naur's siteFrom a
blog entry talking about Microsoft Word competing with a native word processing app in Japan:
About this time, Ichitaro underwent a total rewrite. For some reason Just Systems decided they needed to redo their whole application as “component software” (a fad at the time). You may remember this idea that you would be able to “buy” individual features of a product and plug them together to get the set you wanted. Hmm... Anyway, the rewrite took too long, and in desperation JustSystems put out a buggy, slow (over 30sec to boot - and Word was 8sec on the same machine) Ichitaro that actually had less features than the product it replaced.
tags:
ComputersAndTechnology AgileDevelopment
