ITT: AI induced dunning-kruger. Everybody can write maintenable code, just somehow it happens that nobody does.

Most of the unmaintainable code I’ve seen is because businesses don’t appreciate the need to occasionally refactor/rewrite or do anything to maintain code. They only appreciate piling more on. They’d do away with bug fixing too if they could.

Many opensource projects are in same state, I know for sure my projects become spaghetti if I work more than a year on them.

Besides, I’d argue that if you need to rewrite (part of) it is because it wasn’t maintainable in the first place.

I disagree. Rewriting is a core component of maintaining a code base. It’s the evolution of code. Not rewriting and hooking in some janky way is much worse. No one can see all the possible needs of code the first time they write it. Or even the tenth. Updating the code by rewriting sections is the healthier way to use everything you learned since the first time you wrote it to keep it clean and improve it.

Well, if rewriting is maintaining, everybody can write maintenable code.

Did it become a mess? Rewrite time!

For me the art is writing it so you don’t need to rewrite and you don’t need a janky temporary permanent workaround if requirements change. Clean interfaces, SOLID, plug-ins, etc. Can’t do it myself, but the legendary 10x devs usually do.