I've been involved in rewrite-from-scratch projects that worked, because the scope of the system being rewritten was relatively small. So, I've concluded "rewrite from scratch" projects get a bad rap because they tend to also be very big, nebulously scoped projects, almost by definition. But it's totally unrelated to the fact that they're rewriting a codebase, and everything to do with the size and scope of the project to rewrite a codebase.
Either way, though, we're lead to similar conclusions as the article, regarding refactoring. If a codebase/system is too large to rewrite in a single project, you have to break the work into incremental steps. Theoretically the only difference between "refactor" and "rewrite" is the scope of the affected code.
Either way, though, we're lead to similar conclusions as the article, regarding refactoring. If a codebase/system is too large to rewrite in a single project, you have to break the work into incremental steps. Theoretically the only difference between "refactor" and "rewrite" is the scope of the affected code.