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The Airplane Analogy

  • The commercial airlines take maintenance seriously.

    They document the nature, purpose, and history
    of every part of every plane in each fleet. They
    also evaluate industry-wide trends, via the FAA.

    This lets the entire aviation industry spot problems,
    issue repair bulletins, etc. As a result, equipment-
    based airplane crashes are very infrequent.

  • Shouldn't we take software maintenance seriously?

    Just as the airlines track rivets and engines, we could
    track files and packages.

    This isn't rocket science, just a simple matter of
    software (:-).