Comment by tracker1

Something that works poorly is often better than something that doesn't work in an instant. This is what I have to tell myself every time I step into a massive, excessively complex mess of a codebase. Many business rules aren't clearly defined ahead of time in a way that always translates well to the code and starting over is a mistake more often than not imo.

Update... refactor... update... break off... etc. A lot of times, I'm looking at something where the tooling is 8+ years old, and the first order of business should be to get it working on a current and fully patched version of whatever is in place... replacing libraries that are no longer supported, etc. From there, refactor what you can, break off what makes sense into something new, refactor again. This process, in my experience, has been far more successful than ground up, new versions.

I say this while actively working on a "new" version of a software. New version being web based, "old" version being a winforms VB.Net app from over a decade ago. Old version has bespoke auth, new verion will rely on Azure Entra... Sometimes, starting over is the answer, but definitely not always.