Comment by t43562
6 months ago
On the other hand...... if you look at software as a thing that is mostly about people's heads rather than code.
I mean that in a way I think it's more important to have a team that understands the problem domain fully than to have the code itself. Obviously the business might not think so but as a software process, the costly thing to do IMO is get a group of people to a point of common understanding where they can work productively.
When your developers didn't write the code they're unlikely to understand all the reasons why it is the way it is. How do you get them trained up to that level again? One way is a rewrite. The end result may be no better or even worse but now you have people who know the system, the business and they can look after it efficiently....until they all leave and you start again.
This is my devil's advocate answer to my own feeling that one should never rewrite.
I agree, Rory Sutherland mentions the irony of using AI for things where the value was in the process and not the deliverable, like college essays.
50kloc made by chatgpt in 1 day of vibe coding =/= spending 3 months coding =/= npm install solution
Even if the code and product end up exactly the same, your capacity to improve the product and talk about the business are not.
I find similarities in physical supply chains and sourcing, while sand and cement may be fungible, you don't want to buy sand that was stolen from a beach, or cement made from an uneducated manufacturer that doesn't follow regulations. Even if the product is the same.