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Respectfully, commenting code and making it easily readable don't usually add to the bottom line. So while we all miss playing Pinball, it would be a waste of m

• NoPiece 14y ago
  I would suspect the programmer was lazy or rushed, and wasn't considering shareholder value.
  • corin_ 14y ago
    Rushed is really the same thing, even if the words "shareholder value" weren't in their minds at the time.
• jsaxton86 14y ago
  I disagree. Sure, in the short term, taking on that technical debt may have made sense, but in the long term, this is a perfect example of how technical debt added significant maintenance costs to a project. What if dropping Pinball was not an option? The cost to the shareholder would have been much higher than it needed to be.
• shabble 14y ago
  There's some commonly repeated (and likely even true to some extent) that ~60-70% of the cost of a software system is in maintenance. Which to me, sounds like if you're the contractor providing the system, that means 60-70% of the value is in the maintenance. It does mean taking something of a hit upfront so make things maintainable, but with the right billing structure you can be adding to the profits by Doing It Right as you go. It's certainly still a gamble though; you might not get the maintenance contract. You might be billing hourly and thus don't see any extra cash for your timesavings (and indeed, might see less).