Serious question: as a user (not as a developer!), have you ever seen substantial improvement in a piece of a software from a ground-up rewrite?
In other words, have you ever used (but not co-developed) something where the developer(s) decided on stopping evolutionary work and instead embarked on a substantial rewrite, and the outcome as you saw it firsthand was a real improvement?
If so, please state your example. Please stick to personal experience, rather than hearsay. Thanks!
@xahteiwi Apple switching to OS X from original classic Mac OS. It was a bumpy transition, but the benefits clearly outweigh the losses and the 'golden age’ of OS X was pretty great. (I do miss the old look and feels.)
Apple’s switch to PowerPC, Intel and then Apple Silicon is another, there is substantial re-engineering going on under the hood to make it appear seamless to the users and serious performance and efficiency gains.
Microsoft’s leap from Window 3.1 to XP is also a great example.
Florian Haas
Ginkgo