Jens Oliver Meiert

The Great Web Maintainability Survey

Published on May 14, 2017 (updated Jul 8, 2023), filed under , . (Share this post, e.g. on Mastodon or on Bluesky.)

The maintenance and economics of websites (and apps) is a much-neglected topic in the web development community, perhaps encouraged by both project owners, who are at times inhibited by counter-productive mindsets, perhaps supported by unhealthy abstraction through tools, frameworks, and libraries.

The cost of maintenance is high, however, manifesting itself in many a redo that should have been a redesign, and that sometimes foolishly so, given that there are many plain unnecessary changes. All changes have a price, and so if there’s one thing imperative in web development then it’s to prevent, by design, all changes that can be avoided—including things as inane as renaming style sheets.

Now, I have written about the maintenance and maintainability of websites for many years, and I deem it’s important to survey the industry again and collect, more comprehensively this time, current good (but also poor) practices around maintainability. For that reason I’ve created a brief survey which I invite you to contribute to:

Three questions but one survey.
Three questions for you.

I have nothing more to say; the survey will be open for one month (until June 14, 2017) to allow for hopefully wide participation. I’ll publish the results in the weeks after—stay updated through one of this site’s feeds or on Twitter.

Update (June 16, 2017)

The results are in, the survey is closed, and I’ve already started doing something useful with all the feedback. Thank you!

Update (January 24, 2018)

Thanks to everyone’s feedback, here is: The Compact Guide to Web Maintainability: 200 Tips and Resources.

About Me

Jens Oliver Meiert, on March 2, 2026.

I’m Jens (long: Jens Oliver Meiert), and I’m an engineering lead, guerrilla philosopher, and indie publisher. I’ve worked as a technical lead and engineering manager for companies you use every day (like Google) and companies you’ve never heard of, I’m an occasional contributor to web standards (like HTML, CSS, WCAG), and I write and review books for O’Reilly and Frontend Dogma.

I love trying things, not only in web development and engineering management, but also with respect to politics and philosophy. Here on meiert.com I talk about some of my experiences and perspectives. (Please share feedback: Interpret charitably, but do be critical.)