Too Much Focus on the Beginning of Software Lifecycle?

rfreedman asks: "Most of the buzz on the web about software development tools, languages, and practices seems to concentrate on getting software developed as quickly as possible. Take, for example, the current huge hype about Ruby on Rails, and how it allows the creation of a CRUD web-database application x-times more quickly than every other environment. It seems to me that this concentration on initial construction of software ignores the issue of total cost of ownership. Most people who develop software also have to maintain it, and have to support changes to it over long periods of time. As has been discussed many times over the years, maintenance is the most expensive part of the software development life-cycle. I think that the software development community would be better served by discussions of how to build more robust, flexible, and maintainable software (thereby driving down TCO), than by the endless discussions that we currently see about how to build it quickly. What do you think?"

Re:It's a disposable culture.

[kfg]

. . .it's cheaper to just start from scratch every couple of years.

But just think of all those lines of code being dumped into our landfills. Sure, it's easy enough to ignore it now, but ultimately we leave the problem to be dealt with by our children.

Everybody! A-one and a-two and a-three . . .

Won't someone please think of. . .

KFG

Re:Not justified -- focus on QA instead.

[Anonymous Coward]

We need to take the defects per line from 1 in a hundred to 1 in a hundred thousand.

No way! Imagine the cumbersome process of having to browse through a hundred thousand lines before you spot the bug! No thanks, I like it this way.