Re: A Trend Towards Lower Software Maintenance Budgets?

Chris Dollin wrote, On 31/10/07 10:00:
Flash Gordon wrote:

Malcolm McLean wrote, On 30/10/07 22:58:
"editormt" <editor@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:1193751241.448119.50250@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Software maintenance is an important part of the software development
activity, but it is also the less discussed. A recent poll seems to
show that the part of maintenance in software development budget is
going down. Why?

Extreme programming. It has been recognised that it is easier to write things from scratch than to try to endlessly patch old code.
That is a vast oversimplification at the very least.

Granting that ...

OK, so you agree with the main point of my post :-)

I have 50,000 lines of code, is it easier to change 10 lines of code to fix an issue or rewrite the program? I have a 5 line program, is it easier to patch it for a massive change or rewrite it?

He said /endlessly/. One ten-line fix might be cost-effective. A thousand
might not be.

It's all choices of tradeoffs; one needs to know the business value and the
expected costs.

(I don't know what Malcolm meant when he said "extreme programming", but I
do know that the term as I understand it doesn't mean (only) "rewrite, don't
modify". If you /have/ a Whole Bunch Of Existing Code, how you deal with
it will Depend On Many Things, whether you're using XP or not.)

Yes, which was my point. Sometimes code needs to be scrapped and rewritten, sometimes it needs to be modified. This applies at all scales (yes, I've been involved in scrapping and rewriting what after the rewrite was about 50000 LOC). So blanket advice to scrap and rewrite is bad advice just as blanket advice to always modify what you have is bad.
--
Flash Gordon
.

Relevant Pages