I’ve been part of at least 2 successful rewrites. I think that Joel’s post is too often taken as gospel. Sometimes a rewrite is the best way forward.

Moving Ladybird from C++ to a safer more modern language is a real differentiator vs other browsers, and will probably pay dividends. Doing it now is better than doing it once ladybird is fully established.

One last point about rewrites: you can look at any industry disruptor as essentially a team that did a from-scratch rewrite of their competitors and won because the rewrite was better.