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Software maintenance is what you have to do for it to keep working. It is a useful distinction, especially from the point of view of management, even if the too

Software maintenance is what you have to do for it to keep working. It is a useful distinction, especially from the point of view of management, even if the tools and skills used are the same. In many companies, the funds for maintenance might come from a different source than developing new features. One could say that all office workers do the same job -- reading text on the screen, clicking with their mouses and pushing buttons on their keyboards. But this misses the reasons why people are pushing those buttons or clicking things with their mouses.

mongol 4y ago
Exactly. Maintenance is keeping the lights on. As a manager, it is the level of budget you can't do without.
bee_rider 4y ago
They sorta handle this in the end, which I thought was thoughtful, since it does contradict their original point a bit. > However, if you consider that the environment the program works in can change (library or OS upgrades for example), then you could compare this to handling wear and tear. > There are systems that are maintained only in this sense: fixing bugs, and making sure that it can keep running. But I would argue that this is a very small part of all software development work being done. Furthermore, when it comes to fixing bugs, there can be ambiguity. Is this really a bug, or is it in fact a request for new functionality? And why fix the bug at all, if it has worked up until now, and the only objective is to keep the system running. So, in some sense, this form of maintenance is also just ordinary software development. I’m not sure what to think about this in particular. A program runs on a computer, which has an OS, and over time those OS’s are updated. Is “make sure it runs on RHEL 9, when it already ran on RHEL 8” a development or maintenance task? I would characterize maintenance as dealing with the inevitable decay of things over time. Technically the computer+RHEL 8+program system should still work but of course you probably want to benefit from the new development work put into RHEL 9. And if you let your OS become too old, it becomes unsupported and insecure…
- mongol 4y ago
  Where I work, the difference is basically, making things that already bring in revenue continue to work = maintenance. It is about the decay over time, but also the cost of just making business, keeping the lights on. Just as you need to pay your cloud bills to keep your service running, you need to have a certain amount of developer-hours addressing things that do not work perfectly and needs adjustments and fixing. For the developer in question it may not matter much, it is git branches and continuous deployments just the same, but the distinction is not really for the benefit of the developer. It is for the manager that can reason about different opportunity costs by knowing how much time and money maintenance work needs.

mongol 4y ago

Exactly. Maintenance is keeping the lights on. As a manager, it is the level of budget you can't do without.

bee_rider 4y ago

They sorta handle this in the end, which I thought was thoughtful, since it does contradict their original point a bit. > However, if you consider that the environment the program works in can change (library or OS upgrades for example), then you could compare this to handling wear and tear. > There are systems that are maintained only in this sense: fixing bugs, and making sure that it can keep running. But I would argue that this is a very small part of all software development work being done. Furthermore, when it comes to fixing bugs, there can be ambiguity. Is this really a bug, or is it in fact a request for new functionality? And why fix the bug at all, if it has worked up until now, and the only objective is to keep the system running. So, in some sense, this form of maintenance is also just ordinary software development. I’m not sure what to think about this in particular. A program runs on a computer, which has an OS, and over time those OS’s are updated. Is “make sure it runs on RHEL 9, when it already ran on RHEL 8” a development or maintenance task? I would characterize maintenance as dealing with the inevitable decay of things over time. Technically the computer+RHEL 8+program system should still work but of course you probably want to benefit from the new development work put into RHEL 9. And if you let your OS become too old, it becomes unsupported and insecure…

mongol 4y ago
Where I work, the difference is basically, making things that already bring in revenue continue to work = maintenance. It is about the decay over time, but also the cost of just making business, keeping the lights on. Just as you need to pay your cloud bills to keep your service running, you need to have a certain amount of developer-hours addressing things that do not work perfectly and needs adjustments and fixing. For the developer in question it may not matter much, it is git branches and continuous deployments just the same, but the distinction is not really for the benefit of the developer. It is for the manager that can reason about different opportunity costs by knowing how much time and money maintenance work needs.