Never Ever Do a Total Rewrite, Software Development Best Practices

My talk at the Spaces Summit conference in 2024.

You can download the slides here: roy-t.nl/files/2024_Never_Ever_do_a_total_Rewrite.…

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Imagine a legacy application, with all its warts and defects. Wouldn't it be great to rewrite it? Using all the knowledge you have now ? Maybe even using a new language or framework? The result would be a testament to software craftmanship, and even the business would benefit as it would become easier to add new features.

Let’s fast forward 2 years. Your team is supporting two applications. They spend most of their time building new business critical features for the legacy application!? While the rebuild is failing to catch - up. Only a few users have migrated by themselves and you are constantly chasing the rest.

Meanwhile the rebuild is starting to look a lot less fresh and the first few warts begin to appear. In this talk I will show you why you should never do a total rewrite. I will show you which techniques you should employ instead to keep your application modern and your users happy.