I don't quite buy this romantic image of an engineer trying to fight for the people still using the device in 10 years time - I really doubt this was designed so that it could be used after the lithium battery completely died. More likely it was designed so you could use some batteries that you can buy anywhere in the world when you are out and about traveling/vacationing and the battery is flat. I work at a fairly m…
Your engineering manager is on to something. I feel like that romantic desire, ironically, gets in the way of making real progress 99% of the time; even the code I'm really proud of, given enough time, will probably end up irrelevant, if only because I'll have learned so much more in all that time. It's easy to think of the act of writing as the hardest part of "writing code." But, really, it's all the learning in all the years prior that's most difficult. So, really, "throwing away" code and starting over isn't actually all that costly. Throwing away engineers, their experience, or skills is what gets expensive.
With that said, one of these days I'll start writing my "The Art of Computer Programming" ...