[Themaintainers] Why Do People Neglect Maintenance?

Wed Aug 7 06:12:00 EDT 2019

Regarding Julie K's comment --- I've talked to people who do scientific
computing (ie use computers to solve scientific problems) and they tell me
that while the most current software is all things like R , Python, or C
(which is old) , they also have alot of their old standard software written
in Fortran which was written in 1970's-1980's.  And if something happens
with that --- a problem-- they basically don't really know how to fix it.

  It seems like an issue of being able to use new technology for fixing
plumbing in a house, but the often very old, underground  water system that
serves your house is basically inaccesible---you'd have to dig up the
street with a bulldozer, cut all the trees down,  and deal with huge pipes
which are decades old.

On Wed, Aug 7, 2019 at 5:24 AM Julien Kirch <archiloque at archiloque.net>
wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I'm working in IT where maintenance is a big topic, for example in banks
> and other large organisations the core systems may be decade-old and
> sometimes use technologies that are becoming obscure.
>
> In IT people are more easily promoted for creating new systems, and newer
> technologies are often seen as more performant and easier to use so
> maintenance is not seen as cool or as a good career choice.
>
> And as maintenance is often not seen as important or difficult by
> management, at any moment your job can be moved to a subcontractor -- for
> example an offshore one -- when budget cuts are required. The secure path
> is to jump from a project as soon as it reach maintenance to go to another
> project that is just starting.
>
> Finally, in my experience, maintenance in IT is often a more complex /
> difficult work than creating new systems: you have to deal with existing
> constraints, documentation is often lacking with important knowledge lost,
> and breaking the system has real consequences.
>
> So in many places things are pretty dire, and I don't think they will
> improve soon.
>
> Julien
>
> Le 7 août 2019 à 10:13, Ishi Crew <mediaentropy at gmail.com> a écrit :
>
> I think of farming and food production (my grandparents were small or
> family farmers though they actually had or used huge tracts of land because
> few people lived in that area--north dakota) and i knew people who lived
> partly by hunting , gathering and gardening in WV.  At one time a large
> fraction of US population was involved in farming--like 50%. Now they say
> its just 3% (though there is a much larger population).  However you have a
> huge supply chain for food---trucking, road maintenance for all these
> trucks, energy industry for transport, processing food (sometimes into junk
> or conveniance food, bottled water, coca cola, plastic, huge stores with
> cleaning , stocking , clerks and security personnel and more) .
>
> So the 3% figure which makes things seem simpler, like GIS, involves
> another kind of complexity. I used to have order paper topographic maps for
> my hiking trips---now i can get them on my smart phone in like 5 minutes
> (if i can remember the websites)--very simple.   But making a smart phone
> and websites is complex.  And even having a smartphone makes my life more
> complex---have to learn how to use it, and not lose or break it, or have it
> stolen.
>
> On Wed, Aug 7, 2019 at 2:45 AM Hanlie Pretorius <
> hanlie.pretorius at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I found this article very thought provoking - thank you for compiling
>> it. I wrote down some of my thoughts here, perhaps not much new for
>> people on this list.
>>
>> Often people assert that the 1980s marked a turning point in the
>> economy with regard to spending priorities, implying that before then
>> maintenance was more of a priority. Does this mean that economic
>> reasons are the major ones for lack of maintenance? I suspect so.
>>
>> Was anything else different in the past or was maintenance a problem
>> throughout human history?
>>
>> What about the boredom factor? I sometimes find it difficult to
>> motivate myself to brush my teeth because it's such a repetitive and
>> boring activity.
>>
>> I believe people start appreciating maintenance when they have to do
>> it themselves or if they have to pay directly to have it done
>> (provided it's done properly). Perhaps payment for maintenance should
>> not be part of general taxes, it should be a specific levy that can be
>> traced back to actual maintenance performed.
>>
>> The more complex our society gets, the more extensive and intensive
>> the maintenance requirements get. Under the guise of  simplifying our
>> lives, technology has pushed maintenance to the back stage where other
>> people have to think for us. In my industry (Geographic Information
>> Systems), the move away from desktop software to the web has
>> simplified (the quality of the simplification is debatable) GIS for
>> users not trained in GIS. But behind the scenes, my work has become
>> far more complex.
>>
>> Perhaps we humans just can't help ourselves when it comes to
>> maintenance, just like we can't help repeating the cycles of
>> civilisation rise, complication and collapse.
>>
>> I live in South Africa where the visible evidence of no maintenance or
>> incompetent maintenance is just downright scary.
>>
>> Regards
>> Hanlie
>>
>>
>> > Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2019 10:09:55 -0400
>> > From: lee vinsel <lee at themaintainers.org>
>> > To: Themaintainers at lists.stevens.edu
>> > Subject: [Themaintainers] Why Do People Neglect Maintenance?
>> > Message-ID:
>> >       <CAFfY7rEZbMyYg1jr2dWYtubzU5-j1JniB1PAZj+MP2==
>> GmfSwA at mail.gmail.com>
>> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>> >
>> > Hey, everybody.
>> >
>> > The three Maintainers co-directors - Andy Russell, Jess Meyerson, and
>> > I - pulled
>> > together a blog post laying out the factors/explanations we often hear
>> > about why maintenance is neglected.
>> > <
>> http://themaintainers.org/blog/2019/7/30/why-do-people-neglect-maintenance
>> >
>> > As is often the case these days, this post attempts to echo back what
>> we've
>> > been hearing from others - including all the folks on this list!
>> >
>> > And as always, we are especially keen to hear feedback from you all.
>> We're
>> > hoping this post kickstarts discussion about how to think and theorize
>> > about and empirically study these issues. Please give us feedback in
>> anyway
>> > you see fit - in the blog comments, on Twitter, via private/direct
>> > messages, such as email, and ESPECIALLY on this list!!! :-)
>> >
>> > Hope everyone is doing well.
>> >
>> > Lee
>> >
>> > --
>> > Co-Director
>> > The Maintainers
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