#code refactor

There’s always a reason to rebuild. Perhaps you’re a CEO of a startup that’s had some success and your engineers are clamoring to replatform and do a rewrite from scratch. Perhaps you’re an executive or IT lead and you’re counting the cost of pulling the trigger on a rewrite of a legacy application. Perhaps you’re a lead engineer in the midst of a rebuild and are having second thoughts (am I crazy?). Regardless of where you’re at, you likely already know that talk of rebuilds, like talk of tax reform or anarchy, is just a tad bit dangerous—you never know what kind of danger you’ll end up in if you actually convince yourself to go through with it.

Single worst strategic mistake you could ever make? Rewriting code from scratch.