Might just be splitting hairs here but the example the author uses sounds more like a new product than cleaning up tech debt. With that, what the author says might be moving users to a new product that better suits their needs but that new thing might also be full of tech debt. So it might not be any better of a codebase for adding new features and fixing bugs.
In general, I think cleaning up tech debt without having to reintegrate your entire userbase is probably preferable.
Might just be splitting hairs here but the example the author uses sounds more like a new product than cleaning up tech debt. With that, what the author says might be moving users to a new product that better suits their needs but that new thing might also be full of tech debt. So it might not be any better of a codebase for adding new features and fixing bugs.
In general, I think cleaning up tech debt without having to reintegrate your entire userbase is probably preferable.
Yeah, the description sounds more like a rewrite than clean-up of tech debt. Maybe that really is the best way, I don’t know (I doubt it).