Don’t light my fuse

In the fabulously funny (I may be overselling it) Mystery Men, the hapless heroes are brought together by the shadowy Sphinx; scrum master by day, crime fighter by night, a figure whose aphorisms inspire his team to save the city from Prince Practitioners. Judge for yourself:

He who questions training only trains himself at asking questions.
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To summon your power for the conflict to come, you must first have power over that which conflicts you.
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When you can balance a tack hammer on your head, you will head off your foes with a balanced attack.

I’m psyched. I’m exaggerating. The Sphinx, as far as I’m aware, isn’t an Agile consultant; though sometimes my Twitter feed suggests he could be. A 140 character per-post social networking service does tend to encourage brevity, tending to meaningless. It’s harmless enough, and within all the chaff there’s an occasional nugget. It is - and I wish I didn’t feel the need to say this - in no way indicative of the worth of this set of development methods, as Twitter is in no way indicative of the worth of anything. It makes me smile, if not always in the way intended. Sometimes it makes me frown:

Legacy maintenance is nothing but a pay-cheque. Sustaining a healthy, talented team of engineers in that arid environment is impossible.

Now there’s a statement that troubles in a multitude of ways, it’s a dead-end, a mixture of obvious, worthless and insulting. “Obvious” because we learn nothing in being told certain tasks aren’t that enjoyable; you might as well comment children are our future and fun things are... erm... fun. “Worthless” as one definition for legacy is any live software (I read that on Twitter!) and therefore most projects would require, bar the first iteration, some level of “legacy maintenance” - how do we live with ourselves? “Insulting” since telling those who do such work they’re only in it for the money, and (unintentionally?) insinuating they have no ability, isn’t very helpful. It doesn't progress the subject. It’s also bollocks. It’s a cul-de-sac of thought; at worst a “talented people don’t do these kind of jobs”, at best a “some jobs are more enjoyable than others”; well, you don’t say, but they still need to be done. Just what kind of world do we seek; one that would ghettoise certain types of work, or one where all can contribute, and all contributions are valued?