Good Article. I started out my career back in the 80’s as a maintenance mainframe programmer and I still work with existing systems both mainframe and web. So I am always thinking of maintenance when I have to dig into code, database design, or the architecture. Sometimes the best way to do something is not always the quickest or most “slick” way. Time and time again I see new applications being created by third parties and then maintained by the “maintenance" staff. Then it takes some time years for that system to become stable (if ever). What a great world it would be if the developers of new systems would have to maintain their work for the first couple of years. Then they could maybe learn about what its like to fix something after it fails, which like you said, it will fail.