Rewriting a side project app with the latest boilerplate generator and toolkit, IMHO, is an obsession that is just a great way to avoid doing work.
There comes a point in a side project where it gets too big for the usual sole developer to deal with and they think, "If I just upgrade to the next magic stack I'll be able to manage this complexity."
What's usually happened is that the QA load for adding new features has gotten too high and the usually sole developer can't add new features to anything without breaking stuff and at least going through a long test cycle. With a larger team, QA can help patch up the holes. However, if a project has solid TDD, this doesn't become a problem because, if the tests all pass, everything works.
Just my two cents, but that was my experience before I got really into TDD.
There comes a point in a side project where it gets too big for the usual sole developer to deal with and they think, "If I just upgrade to the next magic stack I'll be able to manage this complexity."
What's usually happened is that the QA load for adding new features has gotten too high and the usually sole developer can't add new features to anything without breaking stuff and at least going through a long test cycle. With a larger team, QA can help patch up the holes. However, if a project has solid TDD, this doesn't become a problem because, if the tests all pass, everything works.
Just my two cents, but that was my experience before I got really into TDD.