Reacting to a comment left by Frans Bauma, Ayende recently wrote about “Maintainability”

Maintainable is a value that can only be applied by someone who is familiar with the codebase. If that someone find it hard to work on the codebase, it is hard to maintain. If someone with no knowledge of a codebase find it hard to work with it, tough luck, but that doesn’t say anything about the maintainability of a code base.

I usually agree with what Ayende has to say, but not this time. First I hope that by “someone who is familiar with the codebase” he doesn’t refer to the person that actually wrote the code – since if the person who wrote the code can’t understand what he/she wrote than the code base is doomed anyway.

In the wider-sense “someone who is familiar with the codebase” is just part of the picture – a code base is only maintainable is a reasonably professional developer can get to a point where she is familiar enough with the code to be able to maintain it. This doesn’t imply that the time it takes to be productive with the code base is zero – but the lower the time it takes to get up to speed means the more maintainable is the code.

In any event, for a codebase to be maintainable, it has to show several quality attributes .For the most part I agree withthe definition of Maintainability in ISO 9126:2001 Software Engineering Product Quality*

6.5 Maintainability
The capability of the software product to be modified.  Modifications may include corrections, improvements or adaptation of the software to changes in environment, and in requirements and functional specifications.

• 6.5.1 Analysability - The capability of the software product to be diagnosed for deficiencies or causes of failures in the software, or for the parts to be modified to be identified.
• 6.5.2 Changeability - The capability of the software product to enable a specified modification to be implemented.
  NOTE 1 Implementation includes coding, designing and documenting changes.
  NOTE 2 If the software is to be modified by the end user, changeability may affect operability.
• 6.5.3 Stability - The capability of the software product to avoid unexpected effects from modifications of the software
• 6.5.4 Testability - The capability of the software product to enable modified software to be validated.
• 6.5.5 Maintainability compliance -The capability of the software product to adhere to standards or conventions relating to maintainability.

Naturally, being a standard it has the “compliance” thingy which is usually only relevant for large organizations and project but for the most part the different aspects mentioned above are the parts you need to take care of when you want someone besides yourself to make changes to the software.

The view of Maintainability Ayende uses is problematic esp. when we consider that (successful) software will spend most its life in maintenance and not in development (you can read Robert L. Glass’s excellent “Software Maintenance is a Solution, Not a Problem” paper in this regard). Assuming someone maintaining the code will always be familiar with it is expecting the same developer(s) to stay at the same project for as long as the project will live (which is not likely) and/or assuming the project will have a short life (not something I’d want from my projects)

So don’t forget that other people will have to maintain your code and they probably won’t live the code-base as you do or as they say in “Code for the maintainer” in the C2 wiki

“Always code as if the person who ends up maintaining your code is a violent psychopath who knows where you live. “ :)