The Hidden Cost of Software Rewrites
SMRTR summary
Software rewrites fail not because of bad code, but because mature systems encode decades of hard-won knowledge that never gets transferred. From Netscape's three-year browser rewrite handing Microsoft the market, to the FBI's $105M wasted on Virtual Case File, the pattern repeats. The real fix is designing for reversibility — incremental migration, strangler fig patterns, and treating architectural decisions as things you can still undo.
SMRTR provides this summary for quick context. The original article belongs to Hacker Noon.
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