[SKILNER]

I gave a presentation many years ago to a software process group in Silicon Valley entitled, "Unsolved Problems of Software Maintenance". The problems are all still there.

Having done lots of both greenfield and maintenance work over four decades, I can unquestionably say that software maintenance is way, way more difficult.

I heard this first from Joel Spolsky, "it's easier to write a program than read it."

Which led me to write an article on the subject, "How To Read A Program," about the cognitive aspects of trying to learn unfamiliar code. https://www.itjungle.com/2009/01/28/fhg012809-story01/

The article uses AS400 applications as an example, but is general enough that it applies to applications in most languages.

This is a field begging for help from AI.

[hinkley]

Someone needs to start doing comp-lit style studies of computer code instead of literature.

Most of the problems of API design could be remedied by people stepping through their own code and looking askance at the whole process.