What's in a name?

Posted Dec 7, 2025 18:55 UTC (Sun) by khim (subscriber, #9252)
In reply to: What's in a name? by alx.manpages
Parent article: Eventual Rust in CPython

> Rewriting something from scratch is almost always a bad idea.

Not true. I've seen things being rewritten from scratch by someone to become much better. In Linux and outside of Linux.

But the catch there is one: if something can be understood and written by one, single person (or, maybe, very small group of persons, 3-5 people with one lead and a few helpers) then things work beautifully, very often.

If something couldn't be understood and written by one person in a reasonable timeframe (couple of years tops) then rewrite, very often, just becomes a mirror of the first attempt, just with glaring flaws in a slightly different places.