Software maintenance as a field seems to be kept in the dark. Have you ever heard of a conference dedicated to maintenance? It is just not sexy or important enough.
There is also a general lack of books dedicated to the topic. Some books might mention the maintenance cycle in passing when discussing all parts of the software engineering life cycle. But we need details to survive the maintenance conundrum.
The problem extends into education. There is a lack of courses on this topic as well. The best that I remember from Computer Science was one on Software Engineering. However I gauge that most of the class got little information on maintenance from that class.
Finally, I do not think I have seen many web logs focusing on the software maintenance task. Again this may be due to the fact that developers don't like doing maintenance. I figure I can do my part by continuing to explore the subject in this and other blogs I am involved with.
