That claim appears to contradict the second-system effect [0].
The observation is that second implementation of a successful system is often much less successful, overengineered, and bloated, due to programmer overconfidence.
On the other hand, I am unsure of how frequently the second-system effect occurs or the scenarios in which it occurs either. Perhaps it is less of a concern when disciplined developers are simply doing rewrites, rather than feature additions. I don't know.