It's important to step back and take a broad-based perspective. Are you complaining about something that saps you 5% (which can be annoying) or 90%? People complain about both, and it's not easy to tell which is the case just from the volume of complaint.
Across the software industry, we lose an incredible amount of time to the maintenance of bad code. The average professional programmer writes about 250 lines of new code per month. Most large software companies have zombie legacy systems that have ceased to grow but have one or more full-time developers only on maintenance.
So, yes, there is a problem. The way we are doing things, as an industry, is terrible. On the upside, this means that there's a lot of profit potential in improving engineering practices.
Instead of, say, adding a new feature to a large project, let's lay a new subway line in New York. Better make sure that it works with the current signaling system, and can accomodate every train that's on the lines now. Oh, and before you start digging, you better check that you're not cutting across existing power, water, steam and gas lines. Not to mention other tunnels, building foundations, mole people colonies, etc.
Across the software industry, we lose an incredible amount of time to the maintenance of bad code. The average professional programmer writes about 250 lines of new code per month. Most large software companies have zombie legacy systems that have ceased to grow but have one or more full-time developers only on maintenance.
So, yes, there is a problem. The way we are doing things, as an industry, is terrible. On the upside, this means that there's a lot of profit potential in improving engineering practices.