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Comment on In Praise of Maintenance (2016)parent

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It is the capacity for maintenance which is the best test for the vigor and stamina of a society.

Why? Personally, I think I'm quite good at maintaining my code, but my office looks like a mess. The two aspects are totally not correlated, and therefore I don't know why anyone could make that kind of claim here.

The capacity and urge for maintenance is a discrete mental capacity which I sometimes experience, but not often enough. If there was a drug to induce it, I would want to take it.

While it's true that sometimes I put my efforts into one thing and not another, I definitely think maintaining things generally is intertwined with mental health - in fact, the somewhat archaic term "mental hygiene" I've often thought suggests this. I generally experience an irrational need to procrastinate that is the opposite of a desire to do maintenance, and I don't see any positive side to it.

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