[oftenwrong]

"avoid maintaining useless things"

If your company is small, heed this warning. If you're spending a lot of time on maintenance of non-essential things, and struggling with supporting legacy things while creating new things, you are missing a huge opportunity. Right now, "trimming the fat" is as easy as it will ever be. As your company grows, it will only become more difficult. Be ruthless now with maintaining focus on things that "move the needle", and with killing things that don't.

Analogy:

It's like you're gearing up for a long hike. There is a natural tendency to take things along "just in case", even if you know you probably won't need it. At the trailhead, you could easily leave some of that non-essential stuff in car. You try on your pack, and it doesn't feel that heavy. You think "what's the harm". Of course, you are still fresh and full of energy at the trailhead. A few days into your hike, you start to really feel the weight of that extra stuff. The pack digs into your shoulders and hips. Your entire lower body is sore. You regret bringing the extra stuff, but now that you are in the wilderness, you cannot just dump it. You have to carry it back with you, and you wish you had exercised restraint when you had the chance.

[maxxxxx]

I am working more and more on this. We have a ton of legacy code we drag along because nobody understands it so it's too scary to touch. I have started to push the idea that it's simply not acceptable to have code we don't understand. We have now refactored several parts that were painfully complex and convoluted by analyzing what they really do and then rewriting or changing. Most of the time it is not that difficult once you commit to the task.