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I wonder if it would be better to start with a new codebase at this point.

~20 years of code, fixes, workarounds, and with a lot of outdated methodologies[0]. I'd love for there to be a competitor to something like Eve or Elite Dangerous in the free software space, and VS is the closest thing I know of. but I don't know that it's worth trying to figure out the cobwebs.

[0] I'm not a SWE, so I may be completely wrong. This is from my limited perspective only.

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Things You Should Never Do, Part 1

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-...

Things I Have Done:

Rewrite sections of the code base from scratch. Like the famous wooden sailing ships of old, one day you look up and realize no line of original code exists.

One of my favorite co-workers: "When someone hands me someone else's code to maintain, first thing I do, throw it out, rewrite it."

I tend to do that as well — although not all of a sudden. :-)

The trouble with advice from Joel is that basically all of it can be refuted with one word: "wasabi".

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