you might want to try to realize that my post was not directed at you but at people who think differently, or if not, at least try to respond to the points I'm making.

if you don't know who Ian Brown is - who I'm talking about here - how can you have a qualified response to what i said?

i dunno.. as an engineer, with every project i've jumped into, among of the first ideas to tackle code rot was usually a total rewrite of some key parts, agreed upon by all the other external engineers.. is it usually a good/practical idea? probably not, but if you have a huge piece of organically grown garbage, taking few steps back and entertaining the thought "how would we do it now, knowing what we know now (and what all these people have learned the hard way)", does not sound like the worst of ideas.

you're familiar with tech debt, right? what if a board of engineers and not your supervillain says a rewrite is one of the things we can try to breathe some life into this