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Comment by scotch_drinker | Hacker News Reader

Everyone has done "successful" rewrites. But a rewrite that takes 2 years and requires a team much larger than the original team isn't successful in the eyes of most stakeholders and is almost NEVER what the dev team proposes as the timeline. Just because something got done eventually at great cost doesn't make it successful.

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Quoting parent: "plus internationalisation, plus thorough automated tests and deployment. They seemed to be really happy with it."

Sounds like success.

There is a reason why stakeholder would like the change despite large cost - if the old system was unstable and source of stress and fires for the stakeholders, they will go for more expensive option.

Kind of like after you had a car that needed to be fixed every few weeks, you will go for more expensive higher quality one next time.

That's why a good strategy is to never put yourself in the position to communicate a timeline. If you are knowledgeable enough about a project so you can make an informed decision that a rewrite is required, the strangler pattern can allow you to complete such a project without ever formally requesting a "rewrite".

If the executives don't get a timeline from you, they'll get it from someone less knowledgeable. Estimates made in ignorance are almost always underestimates because they omit critical work the estimator is unaware of. Therefore, this (bad) estimate will also be a "lowball" estimate, but it will be the only hard number executives have to make their decision. So they'll greenlight the rewrite and more than likely put the lowball estimator in charge. Being vocal, honest, and credible about estimates and the true cost of projects is always the best move.

The strategy is to be vocal, honest and credible by estimating features, not the whole rewrite. The rewrite happens by strangling the original application, feature by feature.

Our team is doing a slow replacement of code written in Java to node. At almost every turn we find that the replaced code is 50 to 80 percent smaller and much easier to read. We're doing it slow because we are phasing in new features at the same time to make sure stakeholders get value while we do it. It's been tremendously successful and cost effective keeping the old and the new running simultaneously.

Awesome results! Is the new code smaller due to the different programming language (JS) or a better understanding of the program's requirements?

Sadly just converting poorly written code that doesn't use re-use mostly. Other than that, we're using multiple typescript frameworks for data wrangling and transport and validation without having to re-define objects as DTOs, Models, etc... And taking advantage of graphql has been, massively helpful.

A bit off-topic but: what made you go to Javascript specifically?

> Just because something got done eventually at a great cost doesn't make it successful

Are you arguing that success is in the eye of the stakeholder? Sounded to me like it was a success.

>> Just because something got done eventually at a great cost doesn't make it successful

> Are you arguing that success is in the eye of the stakeholder? Sounded to me like it was a success.

I think a lot of these stories make sense if you replace software re-write with a home construction project gone overbudget, one where the overage comes out of your pocket.

I'd say that something that gets done eventually at a great cost is not successful if the case made for doing the project was an overly rosy story of how easy/inexpensive it would be to do. It really hurts when you pay for it, and that is the perspective to take.

As for success being in the eye of the stakeholder, sort of -- in my analogy, the construction company might consider it a success all the way to the bank. That project owner may consider it a success to save face. The project sponsor would likely not.

Then I think the good criteria to apply here is: what was the goal of the project?

If it was a quick cash-grab then obviously a long and expensive rewrite is deemed unsuccessful. If you go for the long haul and want to bring real value to your customers and the rewrite helped you do that, then it was a success.

Nothing is ever cheap in IT in my opinion. I found that being very upfront with the people with the money landed me more projects than trying to lie about it and reveal the extra expenses one by one over a course of a year.

"No, that's gonna be very far from 50k euros. Be prepared to pay 300k and it's not gonna be a year. Optimisically, two, realistically, two and half to three."

It works surprisingly well with experienced businessmen. They applaud the honesty and we move directly to the next point -- what are the tradeoffs and compromises.

I've done a rewrite of a major website with another HN'er in about a month of close collaboration. Nobody even realized the platform had been changed before we told them. The original team was a large number of people working part time over a large number of years. Enough cruft had accumulated that a rewrite was the only way to deal with it.

Thanks to Charles Pick (phpnode on here) and pretty tight plan we got the job done in record time. Yes, we could have done even better. But we did not have the budget and the time so we worked within those constraints and got the job done. Would have been super to work with more people, more budget and several months to do it. But as it was it was already a huge improvement over what was there before.

It's exactly what we proposed, and the stakeholders loved it. This is just more ghost story.

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