che dire, d'ora in poi quando mi affibbieranno modifiche e migliorie a un software vecchio, senza documentazione e il cui autore risulta disperso all'anagrafe, bè la prenderò con questa filosofia, chissà magari mi sentirò più importante!
Scherzi a parte è un bell'articolo che sottolinea l'importanza di questa noiosa quanto fondamentale attvità per essere un buon programmatore..

Tratto da Coding Horror
[...]
Software maintenance is...

• Intellectually complex - it requires innovation while placing severe constraints on the innovator
  
• Technically difficult - the maintainer must be able to work with a concept and a design and its code all at the same time
  
• Unfair - the maintainer never gets all the things the maintainer needs, such as documentation
  
• No-win - the maintainer only sees people who have problems
  
• Dirty work - the maintainer must work at the grubby level of detailed coding
  
• Living in the past - the code was probably written by someone else before they got good at it
  
• Conservative - the going motto for maintenance is "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"

[...]
 
Dave Thomas: All programming is maintenance programming, because you are rarely writing original code. If you look at the actual time you spend programming, you write a bit here and then you go back and make a change. Or you go back and fix a bug. Or you rip it out altogether and replace it with something else. But you are very quickly maintaining code even if it's a brand new project with a fresh source file. You spend most of your time in maintenance mode. So you may as well just bite the bullet and say, "I'm maintaining from day one." The disciplines that apply to maintenance should apply globally.

Andy Hunt: It's only the first 10 minutes that the code's original, when you type it in the first time. That's it.