Ok, I see it now, but the liberal conflation of "maintainable" and "code that is easy to work on" that is repeated in 2. still hurts my eyes: they don't see mai

Ok, I see it now, but the liberal conflation of "maintainable" and "code that is easy to work on" that is repeated in 2. still hurts my eyes: they don't see maintainable code, they see code that is easy to work on - not because it is maintainable, but because of its position in the code lifecycle. The confusion between these two is exactly your point, sure, but I don't know how to say it better, I think your wording is just too close to subscribing to it yourself. They think they see maintainable code. I know I do, while writing what I will later call a hopeless mess. (Written by someone who has been doing brownfield projects, often bordering on code archeology, at the same employer for far too many years)