Remembering the Future

If maintenance costs are what determines project success or failure, if in fact the problem is change then, naturally, anything that can be done to reduce maintenance costs is a good idea. And here's where things start to get interesting, here's where software development becomes more than a hobby or craft. Most anybody, given enough time, can write a program to do 'X' but to write a maintainable program to do 'X' requires real engineering discipline. This the fundamental connection between engineering and maintenance; engineering is the discipline of building reliable systems and reliability is the science of maintenance. In the most formal sense the reliability of the system is defined by the cost to maintain it.

Topics: Architecture | Design