I dunno, as someone with a lot of antique furnishings in a 19th-century house, I'd say that there's quite a bit of ongoing maintenance to prevent the march of time and usual wear and tear from grinding everything to dust!
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
The poem reminds me of the Coen Brothers movie "Ballad of Buster Scruggs", released on Netflix a few years ago, which presents four (or five) vignettes.
In one of these Harry Melling plays a handicapped performer of poems in the "wild west", and the segment starts with him reciting this poem. Liam Neeson plays his manager. The segment is one of the most Darwinian, cold things I've ever seen. The whole movie is great, but this vignette especially.
I can’t tell if you’re joking, half-joking, or serious, but in any case, bravo for this response.
On the other hand, some ephemera does stand the test of time pretty well, whether by being ensconced in an environmentally controlled room like a tomb (ie incorporated as part of a long lasting work) or via heavy replication and meme-worthiness, like the Odyssey, the Bible, or the works of Shakespeare.
I don't collect antique furniture, but I do cook with and maintain 100-year old cast iron and a very nice German chef's knife.
I think the biggest difference between software maintenance and maintenance of most physical objects is that physical maintenance is calming, tactile and pleasant.
Routine software maintenance, on the other hand, is hacky, frustrating and stressful.
I would much rather sharpen my knife on a whetstone than fix a dependency on a CI server or wrap my head around Apple's latest code signing bullshit.
> I think the biggest difference between software maintenance and maintenance of most physical objects is that physical maintenance is calming, tactile and pleasant.
A lot of folks don't think this way. I do, but I know many who don't so it's important to remember that, especially when trying to make systemic judgements on fields of industry.
Fair point. I've not met many people who are actually excited by this stuff, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.
I may be a little bit biased in this area as I had to spend a lot of time dealing with a build system that my company had rolled themselves, with one maintainer that spent his entire week just putting out fires, all while under high pressure from deadlines and also external pressure from home eviction, wedding, side businesses).
I just cannot relax or have fun when dealing with WiX or qmake failures or dependencies disappearing.
Right - whereas I find this the most exciting series of things I get to do, by far. It's always a game of hunt the wocket - especially when you're trying to not just hack a solution together.
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