There’s a great article on Code Maintenance over at Coding Horror.
Mention the words “maintenance programming” to a group of developers and they’ll, to a man (or woman), recoil in horror. Maintenance programming is widely viewed as janitorial work.
A janitor.
But maybe that’s an unfair characterization.
To manage the balance between “new” development vs. “maintenance”, one thing I’ve done is to say that if you wrote the code, you maintain it. It’s far too easy to write sloppy if you know someone else is going to have to clean up your mess – same deal with coders throwing buggy code over the wall to Q/A. I like having people incented to write clean and maintainable (for themselves later) from the get-go.
Also, that way everyone writes new code and everyone maintains – so no bickering!
Um, and who’s thinking about the janitors?! Does anyone think they appreciate being compared to maintenance coders?! 
Just teasing. We coders are a lucky bunch to get paid to do what we love. But that doesn’t change the fact that work is work and sometimes it’s hard and not fun.
