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Ask HN: What's the oldest piece of software still in use?

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Re: Ask HN: What's the oldest piece of software still in use?

#61

Post by VLM »

mkl wrote: post #53

The software on the Voyager probes is pretty old, 1977, and I can't find anything that says it's been (or can be) updated since.

Amsat AO-7 from '74 handily beats it.

Some of the "program" in AO-7 is discrete hardwired. Depends if you demand its reprogramable. In which case mask programmed rom devices are unintentionally removed. Or keyboards which are debounced in hardware instead of software are unintentionally removed because the debouncing is done in hardware logic not software. AO-7 is probably "close enough to count" although I can sympathize with an argument against it.

Re: Ask HN: What's the oldest piece of software still in use?

#62

Post by VLM »

pcdavid wrote: post #43

The (probably very small) pieces of software on-board the Pioneer 10? It was launched in 1973 and has certainly never been touched since.

Hasn't been heard from in 11 years, either. Maybe it crashed for all we know.

Voyager probes are still up and running but the power system has only perhaps one decade of useful life remaining as it declines.

Re: Ask HN: What's the oldest piece of software still in use?

#63

Post by oakwhiz »

buro9 wrote: post #56
JanezStupar wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try Foobar2000.

I have. Over the years I have tried everything, but I like WinAmp 2. WinAmp 2 just works great. It's no nonsense and I love the quick find (CTRL+J) on the library... search file name, path, and metadata. Which is how I need search to work, based on my file conventions as well as the metadata.

Don't older versions of Winamp contain security vulnerabilities?

Re: Ask HN: What's the oldest piece of software still in use?

#65

Post by Nursie »

kephra wrote: post #28
Nursie wrote: post #5

Ask a mainframe shop. The back-compat date for mainframes, even just-off-the-line System Z boxes, is 1964. --edit-- I also play Commodore 64 games in emulators, and they date from the 80s, but I suspect this is not the sort of answer you're looking for.

I wrote a set of Nagios plugins for z/Linux in 2008, to monitor a DOS/VS application, running under VM/370 running under VM/ESA, running in an LPAR next to the z/Linux. I don't know how old the application is, but DOS/VS is from 1972, and depreciated since 1980 by DOS/VSE.

Heh, so you were my competition!

It must have been about '08 when I did some work porting parts of Tivoli's event monitoring stuff to z/Linux.

Re: Ask HN: What's the oldest piece of software still in use?

#66

Post by mathattack »

It's worth ruling out embedded software.

The utilities (include the telecom companies too if you want) have a lot of assembly code written ages ago that they're afraid to touch. I suspect that's worth a good first look. I think 50 years is a reasonable guess.

Re: Ask HN: What's the oldest piece of software still in use?

#67

Post by ambiate »

We are using Ingres Databases from the early 90s or late 80s. We have tens of billions of rows.

List of missing things: EVERYTHING. Primary/Foreign key relationships are buggy, therefore, not used. Views are somewhat available. Joins are buggy. Have to build all indices by hand choosing the relational columns and data structure/allocation. Cannot subtract sets without huge where clauses with very odd syntax. Rely mostly on WHERE EXISTS/NOT EXISTS or WHERE IN. Can only perform single column queries in a where clause, no WHERE (a, b) IN. Its free and it works. IT is a cost center. No new databases anytime in the near future.

Re: Ask HN: What's the oldest piece of software still in use?

#68

Post by brudgers »

Though not the oldest by any means, the testing software used for the Architectural Registration Exam in the US and Canada uses Microsoft Media Viewer, Macro-Vision, and the Sirlin engine for handling AutoCad R12 files - all early 90's technology from before NT and 95 [i.e. Windows 3.x].

It was patched for Vista, but doesn't run fully under any x64 version owing to it's 16 bit code.

There is a new version in the pipeline at the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards, but the old validated test engine is still in everyday use.

The hangup is the Media Viewer 1.3 technology. I believe based on comments I previously [2007] made elsewhere that this was Windows 3.0 technology - it's pretty much impossible these days to do a native search for anything which can be interpreted as related to a current commercial technology.

The practice programs for the Architect Registration Exam still use it and can be downloaded from NCARB:

http://www.ncarb.org/en/ARE/Preparing-for-the-ARE.aspx

Re: Ask HN: What's the oldest piece of software still in use?

#69

Post by Someone »

pcdavid wrote: post #43

The (probably very small) pieces of software on-board the Pioneer 10? It was launched in 1973 and has certainly never been touched since.

Pioneer 10 didn't/doesn't really have a computer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_10#Power_and_communicat...:

"The spacecraft included two command decoders and a command distribution unit, a very limited form of processor, to direct operations on the spacecraft"

If we call what it has a computer, it was reprogrammed remotely:

"Much of the computation for the mission was performed on Earth and transmitted to the probe, where it was able to retain in memory up to five commands of the 222 possible entries by ground controllers"

That happened as late as March 2001 (and possibly even later, as communication was finally lost in January 2003): http://www.strobedata.com/home/pioneer10.html

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