[Themaintainers] How do you make maintainance less boring? (was: Thanks and McKinsey Maintenance Report)

[Andromeda Yelton]

In addition to "software maintenance helps people", I would add that
there's a real intellectual challenge involved. Perhaps less creative and
more analytical than green-fields development, but personally I really
enjoy identifying all the moving parts, figuring out how they fit together,
and then rebuilding the plane while it is in flight.

Upgrading a dependency version may be often rather dull, but refactoring a
major component to make it more usable, readable, and, well, maintainable
can be a high-wire act.

On Thu, Oct 22, 2020, 8:25 AM Andrew Russell <arussell at arussell.org> wrote:

>
>
> On Oct 22, 2020, at 3:37 AM, Bastien <bzg at bzg.fr> wrote:
>
> lee vinsel <lee at themaintainers.org> writes:
>
> I think Andy's take was the report was "on point but a
> bit boring."
>
>
> Isn't this the very definition of "maintainance"? :)
>
> If I may use this tangent to open a new discussion: how can we change
> the overall perception of maintainance as "boring"?
>
>
> To be clear, my ‘take' was tongue-in-cheek.  I think Bastien is exactly on
> the right track - stories are more or less engaging to the extent that
> authors know their audiences.  One should not expect a character-driven
> drama from a McKinsey report on “The future of maintenance for distributed
> fixed assets”; just as one should not expect a data-driven assessment of
> IoT to be published in, say, *The American Poetry Review*.  But one
> beautiful thing about maintenance is that it’s an engaging topic for both
> audiences (and so many others).  The challenge comes in how one frames the
> discussion.
>
> A big +1 to Bastien’s last word (below)
>
> "I strongly believe that we need to tell a different *story* about
> maintainance - and actually a million ones.”
>
> Andy
>
>
>
>
> I guess it really depends on the fields.
>
> I have recently discovered the "Technical Debt Quadrant", from reading
> this interesting blog post:
>
> https://somehowmanage.com/2020/10/19/manifestations-of-technical-debt/
>
> I think each part of the quadrant nicely captures what it means to
> maintain a software (not the service it runs, the software itself):
> the only quadrant you want to find yourself in is the "prudent" one,
> where you only have to "deal with the consequences" (here again, a
> nice periphrase for "maintainance".)
>
> That said, "dealing with the consequences" still sounds negative and
> quasi punitive.  You spontaneously represent yourself dealing with
> things retroactively, paying a debt.
>
> BUT, my experience with software maintainance is a bit different.
>
> 1. It is more about PEOPLE than "things": a user reports a bug and you
>   fix it, it will help this user, that's motivating.  Maintainance in
>   Free software is also all about helping others help you, which is a
>   difficult but interesting skill to nurture.
>
> 2. FLOSS maintainance is more about investing than reimbursing.  Of
>   course, you may have to literally suffer when you need to do some
>   boring refactoring and dependencies management... but sometimes you
>   are excited by the challenge of redoing things in a better way, and
>   seeing this move as an investment to find yourself in the "prudent"
>   quadrant again.
>
> That's the way I would argue that free software maintainance is NOT
> boring.
>
> What would be yours in your field?
>
> I strongly believe that we need to tell a different *story* about
> maintainance - and actually a million ones.
>
> --
> Bastien
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