Live data from Hacker News

Textmate 2 and why you should never rewrite your code

kerr.io

1–10 of 52 posts

Re: Textmate 2 and why you should never rewrite your code

#5
Wow, how long did it take to write this article, given the news of Textmate 2 going open source is only hours old? If I was cynical, I'd be guessing that the topical headline was a fairly shameless attempt to gain attention from website aggregators.

On the subject of rewrites, with the benefit of hindsight it's easy to point out when it was a bad idea. But clearly it doesn't always have to be that way. After all, it never hurt Microsoft on occasion, and Apple.

As almost always, context is key.

Re: Textmate 2 and why you should never rewrite your code

#7

Gotta call you out for a sensationalist headline and over-the-top one-sided article. People rewrite their codebases all the time, and quite often it's a very good idea.

In other words, this is a prototypical HN submission. Progblogging is so bad.

Re: Textmate 2 and why you should never rewrite your code

#9

Wow, how long did it take to write this article, given the news of Textmate 2 going open source is only hours old? If I was cynical, I'd be guessing that the topical headline was a fairly shameless attempt to gain attention from website aggregators. On the subject of rewrites, with the benefit of hindsight it's easy to point out when it was a bad idea. But clearly it doesn't always have to be that way. After all, it…

Do you have any examples of Microsoft throwing away their codebase and starting fresh? I believe that is what Apple did with the OS9 to OSX transition. I can't think of too many examples where starting from scratch worked out though.

Re: Textmate 2 and why you should never rewrite your code

#10

Wow, how long did it take to write this article, given the news of Textmate 2 going open source is only hours old? If I was cynical, I'd be guessing that the topical headline was a fairly shameless attempt to gain attention from website aggregators. On the subject of rewrites, with the benefit of hindsight it's easy to point out when it was a bad idea. But clearly it doesn't always have to be that way. After all, it…

Do you have any examples of Microsoft throwing away their codebase and starting fresh? I believe that is what Apple did with the OS9 to OSX transition. I can't think of too many examples where starting from scratch worked out though.

But Apple didn't really "start fresh" internally with OSX, they acquired NeXT which was already a pretty robust product when they made that decision. The abandoned the OS9 codebase, but they didn't really start over from a blank slate.
Post reply on HN