Whenever I need to make large (laaaarge) changes in code that has been sitting in its place for a while, an exciting and a bit frightening thought enters my mind: "throw it all out and start from scratch". Exciting, because starting to build something that you know is gonna be great simply rocks. Fresh, clean code without months or years of editing history is just lovely to work with. Frightening, because you know how long it took to create the existing code, you know how long other rewrites took to do and you know that this is no exception. Also, you know you are gonna have to address all the problems you had in the first run.

But the feeling that you should start from scratch is always there. In my own forum software, Replique, I already did this twice (although the second was a partial rewrite). With reasons and, fortunately, the desired result: a better application. In a CMS that runs at a website I work for, we also did it twice. And it will probably happen again in a few years.

And this is why. Just this afternoon, I stumbled upon Derek Sivers's weblog, who tried to rewrite a website in Ruby but failed miserably. Rafe Colburn replied to his and linked to a piece by Joel Spolsky, from which I quote:

There's a subtle reason that programmers always want to throw away the code and start over. The reason is that they think the old code is a mess. And here is the interesting observation: they are probably wrong. The reason that they think the old code is a mess is because of a cardinal, fundamental law of programming:

It's harder to read code than to write it.

And that is so true. As is probably true for most developers, my coding style has evolved over the years. Indentation, the placing of braces, the naming of variables and so on, when I look at how I did in a few years ago I scare myself. Did I really write this? Yes I did.

And it's not just the style. Over the years, if you're (aiming to be) a professional developer, you learn more and more new stuff. And every now and then there's the urge to try out those new things. And every now and then one of those urges makes it into your code and stays there for years. When you look at it, years later, you know that you should have resisted the urge. Not that it's bad code, of course not, you're a pro. No, it's just.. silly. The old method of doing whatever it was that that code did was just as good. You didn't keep it simple, stupid. ;)

The Big Question you should ask yourself before starting a rewrite is: am I doing this because I want to, or because the changes I want to make need me to? Is it so damn hard to make the changes in the existing code? Does it hurt to just refactor the bits and pieces you are going to use? Will it hurt the performance when you don't do the rewrite? Okay then, do it. If not: just make the changes and be happy about it not costing you time you could use for really new, fresh projects.