How to restrain one's self from the overwhelming urge to rewrite everything?

Question

Setup

Have you ever had the experience of going into a piece of code to make a seemingly simple change and then realizing that you\'ve just stepped into a wasteland tha

Answer 1

I'm a big fan of making lists!

As soon as the urge takes you to re-write something - spend 10 minutes making a list of the things that need re-writing. Follow all of the alleys that take you further into the code that needs attention and list those, too.

Hopefully within a relatively short space of time you'll have one of two things:

• A really long list that completely puts you off wanting to rewrite anything ever again.
• A list which actually isn't that long, so why not indulge yourself and go for a re-write?!