Needed this today. I think sometimes engineers go crazy and go try to greenfield something, anything, because building stuff requires it being in a nonfunctional state for a sec and this is hard enough on its own but there being (understandable, but often very counterproductive) friction around that that comes from what you're working on being something someone is relying on can make it a really daunting and frustrating process due to the inevitability of the trough
It's not a good idea to rewrite working code from scratch. But I've found starting a greenfield project next door to working code often works well.
Not every new feature needs to go in an existing repository. Sometimes it makes perfect sense to implement the new functionality in a separate executable and artifact that doesn't carry along all the technical debt of the old project.
Needed this post and this comment. And hopefully I'm not misreading either. Halfway through my greenfield redesign that I claim is catharsis because I was too scared of breaking things before they got better. I hope that I can put that redesign to rest and actually make progress with the original code.
Often when trying to improve a complex system, the best way to gain new insights and approaches is to just make a branch or even a clean project and try to redo a thing. Even if it doesn't end up in the project often you'll get ideas and inspiration
