This makes total sense. Rewriting code is often easier than reuse. The purpose written code doesn't have to fulfill use cases that don't apply to it, it can make optimizations because of that. The old code doesn't have to start supporting use cases it was never designed for too, so it can stay simpler. Don't repeat yourself, but its ok to speak in original sentences rather than use somewhat applicable quotes for everything you want to convey. For physical parts the number of ways an old part might fail to meet new use cases seems vastly larger than in software, so I'd guess its even more applicable.