Take the 2-minute tour ×  Maintainability is a major stake of
professional software development. Indeed, maintenance is nearly
always the longest part of a software life cycle, as it lasts
from the project release until basically the end of times.
Moreover, projects being in maintenance represent a large
majority of the overall number of projects. According to
http://www.vlegaci.com/298/interesting-
statistics-%E2%80%93-numbers-of-programmers-in-maintenance-vs-
development/, the proportion of projects being in maintenance is
about 2/3.  I recently came across this question, where the guy
looks pretty surprised discovering that his job is mainly about
maintenance. I then decided to open a discussion (french) on the
main site of the French community of software development
professionals (http://www.developpez.com/). The discussion is
entitled "Are students well-enough trained to the reality of
professional software development?" and is mainly about
maintainability. It was pointed out that, at least in France, pe