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Ask HN: Oldest code you have written that is still in use?

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Re: Ask HN: Oldest code you have written that is still in use?

#171

Post by cannam »

Autumn 1992, in an undergraduate industrial placement, a module for approximating special functions (Zeta function, Bessel functions etc) in the REDUCE computer algebra system: https://sourceforge.net/p/reduce-algebra/code/HEAD/tree/trun...

I kept a copy of Abramowitz and Stegun open on the desk for months... I don't think REDUCE is all that widely used nowadays, but it does still work, very well in some respects. It was closed-source at the time and was open sourced relatively recently.

I'll echo the sentiment that most of the commercial stuff I've worked on has either died or never launched at all.

Re: Ask HN: Oldest code you have written that is still in use?

#173

Post by Wingman4l7 »

ScottBurson wrote: post #122

I'm still using a couple of Lisp macros I wrote in 1980 [0]. I think a few other people are using them too. I've improved them a little since then, but the basic concept is unchanged. [0] https://github.com/slburson/misc-extensions -- specifically 'gmap' and 'new-let'

AutoCAD has had a LISP interpreter built into it for ages; I imagine there are various engineering design firms that have been using in-house macros for years and years.

Re: Ask HN: Oldest code you have written that is still in use?

#174

Post by walrus »

peterburkimsher wrote: post #140
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #93

Occasionally, users of a piece of $10 shareware I haven't updated since 2005 email me demanding a refund because this software they bought 10+ years ago has stopped working on El Capitan. I refund their money because it's not even worth my time to argue with them. http://www.chimpsoftware.com/irooster/

Instead of abandoning your program, why not open-source it? No money, no nagging customers. If someone wants to make it work, then they can. You can then deny responsibility for maintaining it.

> no nagging customers

Hah! I wish!

Re: Ask HN: Oldest code you have written that is still in use?

#175

Post by ajuc »

I was a teenager and around 1998 I wrote a Delphi program as a mother's day gift for my mother that works as accountant in a big public institution. The program automated counting banknotes (they still have some people that want to receive their monthly salary in cash, and they have to count the total amount and the number of each banknote kinds separately to catch errors). It was just a loop with modal dialogboxes for entering each person's salary in 2 ways. The program also generated a text-file report and allowed to print it.

I was a noob, and the code is horrible, I even used floating points (doubles) for money :/ so there's accuracy bug that happens for big enough numbers. They apparently still use that program (at least a few years ago they did), and they divide the numbers before they become big enough as a workaround for the bug (but then the reports have to be fixed by hand).

Re: Ask HN: Oldest code you have written that is still in use?

#176

Post by tluyben2 »

80s software written in Turbo Pascal largely by me for which I wrote a library in Delphi in the 90s which would run the software without changes in a Windows window while looking modern and not like a terminal. It is still used a sold in and to a lot of Dutch schools.

Re: Ask HN: Oldest code you have written that is still in use?

#177

Post by ZacharyPitts »

Got into mudding back in 92. After playing the game for a while, 'ascended' to becoming a coder on the backend. I created realms, and did some of the conversion work when the mud went through its first huge shift from a base LP Mud. The mud is amazingly still running: https://www.bat.org

Re: Ask HN: Oldest code you have written that is still in use?

#178

Post by philippnagel »

Wingman4l7 wrote: post #161
crmccreary wrote: post #29

1988. A specialized finite element analysis program. Fortran.

Fortran is still being actively used in academia -- the example I know of is running mathematically precise seismic simulations on supercomputing clusters. Some programs have likely been handed down by multiple generations of grad students.

Yep, a friend of mine is studying meteorology and most programming they do at university seems to be FORTRAN.

Re: Ask HN: Oldest code you have written that is still in use?

#180

Post by xioxox »

From around 1992, a 16 bit Windows Borland (Turbo) Pascal GUI database for my parents' business. This was the 2rd rewrite of some DOS and then Amstrad CP/M software I wrote in Modula-2! It still runs (in a Windows 32 bit VM) and I do change minor features.

I have a Python/PyQt replacement, but it requires some more testing and development.

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