> But the final boss is, and always will be, maintainability.

Always has been, always will be.

I am actually hopeful that AI will finally break the industry and force a reckoning around this. Some of it goes to our economic system. New builds are usually capitalizable, flashy, and a great way to get promoted.

Doing ten to fifteen years of thankless maintenance, keeping a critical system alive with high quality? Usually nobody cares, and it's OPEX, not sexy.