He needs to take a look at this one: "Does Code Decay? Assessing the Evidence from Change Management Data" http://nisla05.niss.org/technicalreports/tr81.pdf ht

He needs to take a look at this one: "Does Code Decay? Assessing the Evidence from Change Management Data" http://nisla05.niss.org/technicalreports/tr81.pdf http://nisla05.niss.org/technicalreports/tr81.pdf The answer is "yes", except if you undertake extraordinarily rare "perfective maintenance". Mostly, managers Just Want It Done Fast, so perfective maintenance never ever gets done, leading to devolving code.