Reading an article linked on Slashdot today made me think about the idea of rebuilding a piece of software from scratch. I am well aware that this is considered a bad thing by some authorities that I respect. However, during this summer I came to recognize another approach.
I wrote about 5 basic PHP based CMS sytems for various websites. All of them had the same basic structure, but were different on the details. Surprise, surprise, everytime I restarted from scratch the resulting applications improved on quality. So if you have the time to rewrite the same application about 5 or more times, you can improve the quality. Another interesting advantage is that if you plan to rewrite your application 5 times before shipping, you have to cut down on features and useless functionalty which will, surprise surprise improve the quality of the product even more.
This is of course only true if you consider less bugs and more stability your criteria for quality.
-Richard
Tags Development