I've heard that the worst code is the 2nd version. You try to fix everything from the 1st version (real or perceived) and over correct as a result.
Re:Lessons learned from rewriting code
by hpolatyuruk on Sunday June 16, 2019 @05:57AM
(#20194751)
Yes, I've heard that too. But in our rewriting case, it didn't happen. We didn't make that mistake. Usually, developers made a lot of mistake in the first version and they learned many lessons. Now they are experienced about software and they will try to implement everything in the 2nd version. And they will come up with the complex system again. In our case, we cut off many features and we kept our code base small.
If the same team that did the crappy code gets a chance to learn from the mistakes and rewrite it part by part now when they have the whole picture, it's easier and the end result might be mantainable and nice.