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As a corollary:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus

You can replace all the parts of your crappy v1.0 code and still call it the same code base. That's what the smart ones go around doing quietly.

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While in most cases it's probably a better option, I think that in this case there wasn't time to do that. I would probably explore the option to still use the parser, and have it generate an AST first, and from there go pretty much in the direction of the author.

Part of the problem is being given an assignment two weeks before a ship date. I know people do stuff like that all the time but that's hardly an excuse (we do terrible things to each other all the time so it's okay?)

The author is already screwed before he even has a chance to start.

The same issue comes up with classic cars. Is a car which has seen many/most of its parts replaced (including chassis members, body panels,...), still the same car?

With cars it gets interesting because someone will repair the old parts, and build a new car out of them. Then you have 20 of the original 8 cars made.

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