The lifecyle of DC tools for SSH

This chapter reviews the lifecycle of digital and computational tools for social science and the humanities from the standpoint of their makers. From start to end, we will see how tools are born from (scientific) practice, how they get named and the trouble it causes to toolmakers, how their feature set changes over time and under the influence of which factors, how they get maintained and repaired and why those activities are a burden to the toolmaker, and how tools eventually stop working, why they lose their toolmakers’ support, and die. This chapter allows for an understanding how the methods embedded in tools evolve and how one can contribute to their scientific purpose.