[smarks]

I agree that the title is misleading, but I'd clarify it to "Software development as typically practiced in industry is an anti-pattern." (Maybe it also applies to government; I don't know.) It seems fairly typical in my experience for the old thing to be continually patched over instead of fixed, awaiting replacement by the new thing that is never quite ready.

[xigency]

In general, "the new thing" doesn't solve problems that patches fix. For a web platform especially, it sounds like expecting a new engine from a new coat of paint.

[PaulHoule]

A lot of it is that consistently people design things on the assumption that 80% of labor will be in the first release, rather than the 80% going into maintaiance which is what happens most of the time.

This is closely linked to the idea that least cost development is a matter of doing every individual action 'cheaply' and pretending you are not going to screw things up. If you want least cost actually least risk is a good approximation.