Slide out or no

Out of curiosity I just did an rv.net forum search using the word "slide" and retrieved 444 pages of discussion. Now obviously not all of these would necessarily focus on slide failure but with so many pages of discussion you can bet quite a few do. To what degree one may be concerned about slide failure really comes down to the individual, with no one being absolutely "right" or "wrong". Bottom line - any slide represents a giant hole in the side of the trailer, uses seals to keep out water, and a mechanical mechanism most often driven by an electrical system to deploy and retract the slide. For all of this to work correctly all these functions have to work in concert as designed, if any one of these don't then one is going to have problems. So the question to ask is whether, over the course of years you may own your rig and the miles over which it may be towed, what are the chances one of these elements isn't going to work as it should? For some that may be years, for others not so much. ;)