Refactor, Don't Rebuild

A very persuasive talk with good examples and stories illustrating why refactoring is generally better than rebuilding.

Lots of pertinent examples were given to support rational for going with refactor over rebuild. I liked the personal experiences Eli shared. I was able to relate to the scenarios and understand the reasoning being discussed. There were a couple of experiences that had a little bit too much time spent on them explaining what happened instead of why it was relevant to the topic but overall very well done. Eli was animated and kept the attention of the audience well and spoke loud enough to hear without a microphone.

He makes a very good case of why we shouldn't be trying to rebuild all the time. I would have liked to see a little more inspection of the reason why rebuilding is a bad idea though. It seemed like the main reason presented was because it had failed with a bunch of other products. The problem I see with just giving examples of when it failed is that it wouldn't too hard to find examples where a rebuild succeeded.