Software engineers hate code

Small piece of advice: it is much better to learn how to take criticism of your code as exactly that - it's criticism of your code. People will always be unkind when reviewing code. Even if it's the best code ever written someone will have a different opinion and express it in a seemingly unkind way. It's easy to be unkind in code reviews because it's _code_ being reviewed and NOT a person with feelings.

Like you said, a different human (the more junior version of you) wrote that code, not you. It's not a criticism of you no matter how much your brain tries to tell you it is. People will never stop saying "who the fuck wrote this shit!?" and you will hear that phrase until the end of time. It's still not personal when people yell that in frustration.

For example, I have learned that Eastern Europeans tend to be absolutely brutal in code reviews. Everything will be nitpicked and the most benign design decisions you've made will be questioned. They make you feel stupid and inadequate but that's your own feelings. It's more likely you're dealing with a direct and to-the-point perfectionist who can see the code beyond your PR and how your code fits in with the rest of the application. They're not the greatest at communicating this context and their comments seem like personal attacks without that context.

Firstly, I'd like to abolish the idea that "greenfield" and existing are somehow opposites. Greenfield projects take on a bunch of existing abstractions and complexities from all the stuff they are built on. Instead, these two terms are actually very similar, "greenfield" projects just chose to throw out one more layer than using the existing system. My argument here is that the dichotomy here is false, and that the two terms are instead a classification of degrees to which you abandon existing abstractions.

As I said, I understand that this is what you mean when you say greenfield, I'm not asking you to use different words. I'm asking you to pay notice that this is what you are saying. That you are explicitly not in a "green field" with nothing around you. You've thrown all the furniture out, but the building is still there, the walls are still the same color, and the windows are still overlooking the same parking lot.

Code gets re-written from scratch all the time, for perfectly legitimate reasons. As even Joel Spolsky knows. He just meant that you should be aware of the trade-off, and that most of the time, you probably don't want to re-write from scratch.

But "Never do X" sounds much catchier. And succeeded in getting the article shared and quoted infinitely and endlessly, to this very day.

Even though everyone knows it isn't, you know, actually literally true. Even Joel.