Yet I find when rewriting from scratch there's a countering force of simplification where I find myself thinking "We spent way too much complexity on that part, and we can entirely do away with that other part, and we turned out never to use features X and Y."

> "...and we turned out never to use features X and Y."

THIS. Often, the best way to start the rewrite is to go straight to the database, and start asking "what allowed values for all these fields have never actually been used?".

EDIT: Whether it's rewriting, or refactoring, or adding some "if( Deprecated_Feature_Allow !== true ) ... ErrorDie( Feature_Deprecated )" logic here and there, or updating training material, or whatever - knowing that Software_Feature got ~zero real-world use is d*mned useful.

Agreed--every software engineer I know loves deleting useless code.

But this is not incompatible with refactoring instead of rewriting.

Yeah, that makes sense too.

I think it just boils down to "keep writing systems and you'll get better at it." But there's no bait on that kind of link.