I love maintenance programming. This makes me a freak among developers. If you look at the job adverts, they're all full of 'greenfield development', 'the chance to define direction' and similar phrases. Original development is interesting and fun, but there's a lot to be said for the Sherlock Holmes experience of bug fixing someone else's code. You have to put yourself in their position, learn from their coding style how they're likely to have approached a problem, keep track of complex code pathways to remember where you are. It's extremely tiring because the concentration demands are high, but it's a fascinating challenge.
It's always useful to be good at, and interested in something most other people hate. Anyone got any really ropey legacy applications they want maintaining?
