How Theseus Would Secretly Rewrite Any Codebase

Fulfill your developer fantasy of a total rewrite — no permission needed, hidden in plain sight, all through an ancient Greek paradox. Piece by piece.

«Eternally maintained ship of Theseus» — Generated and edited by the author.

Those of you who know me know that I have two maxims: never rewrite, never stop development. So, any recommendation from me to rewrite a codebase seems unthinkable. But what if I told you that it’s possible to do a complete rewrite of software without stopping the development of new features? Without any of the associated dangers. And all without any manager noticing anything. So tell me, which codebase would you secretly fix?

Software damage is inevitable

Technical debt is often presented as all the damage that software takes internally. Damage originated in the desire to deliver fast and in the failure to correctly organize the code to support its future evolution. But that’s not it; rather, software lives through continuous transformation, and, even if everything is done right today, any step may reveal new opportunities and better paths that were impossible to anticipate.

On the other hand, there are those who think that damage originates from inexperienced developers or even developers who have never learned to do…