Re: How important is software maintenance?

On 2007-07-23, Ben Pfaff <blp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
John Slimick <slimick@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

Having spent some time doing software maintenance for money,
I can not think of a more valuable area for CS education.
Here are some of the reasons:

[...]

(3) One needs to understand how recidivism works and
how it should be handled.

I'm only familiar with the concept of "recidivism" in the context
of crime and punishment. Google only appears to know about it in
that context, too. Can you explain your meaning here?

Recidivism is when, in the act of maintaining software,
a previous bug reappears. This usually happens when
our maintainer rewrites a module the way he thinks
it should have been written.

This also demonstrates the need to keep a collection
of all bug reports (an archive) that can be tested
as enhancements are made.

john slimick
slimick@xxxxxxxx

.