Does software require more or less maintenance than physical things?

Physical things - buildings, furniture, clothes - accumulate dust, mould, fungus if you just let them be. They start to look ugly and stink. You need to wipe them, wash them, scrub them, repaint them

You need to do this for software too

I think software has a lower rate of decay (i.e. rotting) than physical things

But software has a higher rate of obsolescence (i.e. becoming outdated) than physical things. And as @myshanks pointed out, software dependencies can larger & more dynamic, so requiring maintenance

Maintenance & repair are more time consuming than creation & destruction

Maintenance doesn't have the romance & glory of creation and destruction. But it's critical for public infrastructure https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1296585659780497409

@nayafia's book on the making and maintenance of open source software is excellent https://twitter.com/HelloShreyas/status/1309451430500003840