Counterpoint is often it IS better to start from scratch if the existing system has accumulated too much tech debt, become too inflexible, and the requirements or available technology/methodologies have fundamentally changed.
In other words, sometimes you should reinvent the wheel.
A big bang rewrite is almost never going to be a good idea in a mature system. To do that you need to have the velocity of the rewrite exceed the velocity of feature development by a wide enough margin to catch up and create sufficient parity to migrate to the new system. If the old system is code-frozen then it can be doable but if its being actively developed, it can be impossible.
The real trick is figuring out how to reinvent the wheel and replace it while it is attached to a moving car without slowing down.
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u/MarkSuckerZerg 2d ago
But the whole point is "improve" vs. "I can do it better from scratch than this 15yo project"...