The Value of Maintenance

Excerpt: There's an interesting exchange on the value of maintenance as a profession at the highly-valuable St. Maximos' Hut. Andy gives an example of Diesel engine maintenance where technology has vastly decreased the cost of such maintenance over the years. There are clearly many examples of where this has happened, but software has also clearly increased the cost of maintenance for a large number of systems. The cost of this activity is hidden in many cases, as the "maintenance" is often the rewriting of perfectly functional existing systems in new environments because the old system is now deemed "obsolete". But over time software systems acquire layers of code and patches which increase the cost of fixing the system; eventually every system seems in need of a rewrite. There are a large number of skills related to maintenance programming which are not taught in schools: how to read code in languages you haven't learned before, without taking a six-month Introduction to RPG course at a cost of mere thousands of dollars, or historical perspective on limitations of common software in days gone by. Some people increase the cost of maintenance for other economic reasons, too. In A Deepness in the Sky Vernor Vinge envisions a world where maintenance programming is a profession, and a highly-valued one at that. This profession has a fitting name: programmer-archaeologist. We're all archaeologists when it comes to reading somebody else's code. There is never enough documentation and there are always too many fragments of problems past to assemble a clear picture of why we got where we are.

Blog: SmallBlog

Tracked Back: Thu Sep 15 20:07:35 2005