in reply to Re(2): rebuilding working code
in thread rebuilding working code

Actually, Brooks had changed his mind at least once since The Mythical Man-Month or wherever his quote is from. This from a teleconferenced lecture he gave in 1996: 
Our designs are so complex we can't do it right 1st time by
pure thought.  To expect this is to be arrogant.  So, we
need a design + build philosophy that incorporates 
evolutionary growth.

    * no waterfall design!
    * no plan-to-throw-one-away design either!
Perl's fast "compile-link-load cycle" and CPAN library seem to be a big help to me when I'm evoloving applications.

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom