Maintenance can also help you in creating new things. You see a good basis, from which to extend with new ideas. You see the beauty and craftsmanship of a well-designed device, system, etc. And that inspires you, and sets a floor for the quality of what you want to accomplish.
Maintenance gives you time to "meditate" -- performing needed and useful work while keeping a few neurons open for new thought.
And maintenance saves money, allowing you to invest resources in new projects instead of constantly ad-hoc patching and replacing those you've neglected to the point of failure.
It can also provide some redundancy. If model 2015 breaks down, maybe model 1985 can carry you through the repairs.
Finally, some of the old tools I have are better than the new. Better to maintain them, because I can't replace them with their equal or better for any reasonable price.
It's important to know when to let something go. But, it shouldn't be out of neglect followed by panicked necessity. Panic can generate inspiration, but it's not good as a lifestyle.
You are so right! It's interesting how this applies to many different fields, including software development. I've seen quite a few projects/products fail because maintenance was abandoned in favor of starting from scratch.
Comments
Maintenance can also help you in creating new things. You see a good basis, from which to extend with new ideas. You see the beauty and craftsmanship of a well-designed device, system, etc. And that inspires you, and sets a floor for the quality of what you want to accomplish.
Maintenance gives you time to "meditate" -- performing needed and useful work while keeping a few neurons open for new thought.
And maintenance saves money, allowing you to invest resources in new projects instead of constantly ad-hoc patching and replacing those you've neglected to the point of failure.
It can also provide some redundancy. If model 2015 breaks down, maybe model 1985 can carry you through the repairs.
Finally, some of the old tools I have are better than the new. Better to maintain them, because I can't replace them with their equal or better for any reasonable price.
It's important to know when to let something go. But, it shouldn't be out of neglect followed by panicked necessity. Panic can generate inspiration, but it's not good as a lifestyle.
You are so right! It's interesting how this applies to many different fields, including software development. I've seen quite a few projects/products fail because maintenance was abandoned in favor of starting from scratch.
Here's a relevant related article by Joel Spolsky: https://web.archive.org/web/20170304072731/https://www.joelo...
Why use the Wayback Machine? Joel’s blog is still up: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-...