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

I think this article misses the mark in a few ways, but this is the biggest. I see AI as the ultimate solution for maintenance, in three ways:

* AI does a great job of refactoring and so tech debt becomes shallow. If something is not architected right, it can be fixed much more easily than ever before. * Bug fixing is also a great AI strength. In the future there won't be a backlog of all the bugs that never got fixed. AI can fix them as quickly as they come in. * AI doesn't get bored, doesn't get tired, and doesn't care how crufty the code is. It is happen to maintain any application without judgement.