Chapter 1. When to Rewrite an Application
This is a report about migrating frontend interfaces for web applications, so it might seem odd that it starts with a warning. Before going deep into the how of this guide, we encourage you to thoroughly consider whether a migration of your frontend interface is really something you need to do. There are many cases where your current application will be serving your needs well and should probably stay the way it is. This is a practical guide, and our first piece of practical advice is if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Since you’ve picked up this report, you probably do have hankerings for fixing a codebase riddled with technical debt and rewriting it to something beautiful, clean, and productive. We won’t argue that your codebase is perfect. Honestly, if your business is successful, the chances of museum-worthy code should be vanishingly small. We know vast swathes of that application are probably too horrible to think about, that you need to triple your estimate whenever some hapless engineer needs to tweak something in the dragon zone, or worse, that there are areas that your team is too afraid to touch at all. Given the challenges your team is facing, when should you choose to live with them and set aside the migration guide you hope will make everything better? The following sections will help you decide.
When Your Existing Application Is Likely the Best Choice
There are three main scenarios where working within your existing application ...