I stumbled upon a discussion between senior engineers and people from non-technical backgrounds and this seems to be a strongly held belief in some places.I'm of the opinion that such a situation is purely down to incompetence on the side of the developers and project managers, those involved in creating the original system and those struggling to modify it now. Especial those who intersect both these groups.Am I wrong? If so why?If not, how can I convince developers twice my age that they need to change their approach to software development to overcome this problem and that rewriting the system from scratch every 2-3 years is not just an unavoidable fact of life.Are there books or influential programmers I can quote on this issue?
All software has an expiration date by which time it must be rewritten from scratch.
rewrite;sdlc
Here's an influential programmer's opinion on the subject : the single worst strategic mistake that any software company can make: They decided to rewrite the code from scratch.[1] -- Joel Spolsky