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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?

#131

Post by blub »

feelix wrote: post #91

I wrote a data recovery POSIX compliant command line app in C in 2003 that runs under OS X, Windows, and linux. It's still selling well, and has been all these years. Over time it's generated millions in revenue as it's been used by several different competing apps, and I have only recompiled it about twice in the last 15 years, each time only making a (very) minor change. It went a good decade without a recompile an…

Cool stuff. You are the same person that built a OS X file access filtering app but didn't publish it, right? I think you were considering open sourcing it, any news on that?

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

#132

Post by trymas »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #109
trymas wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, do they have any legal leverage (as in, sue you for 10$) to get their money back in this situation? I would just ignore them, or if point to the relevant point of license agreement and/or law (if there is such point/law).

Dunno. Probably not. But it's not worth the time or energy to deal with them beyond giving them back their two lattes worth of money.

Probably not worth it to argue indeed.

Though coming from a country where $10 can get you 5 lattes :), I would not give those money back. Nevertheless I payed taxes for that income.

It's pennies, but I have known/seen too many people who try to haggle extensively, who need to be reminded about common sense.

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

#134

Post by philjackson »

ssijak wrote: post #110

My "personal" website that I made when I was a kid at 2001. I think that I uploaded it to the Geocities free hosting and soon forgot about it. Then a few years back when I googled my name I stumbled upon it haha It is still up after more than 15 years on god know which free hosting and server, it was so funny. And of course it is used as a joke now by my friends :) And of course I have forgot my credentials long long…

According to Google translate, chess has been interested in you since you were little.

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

#135

Post by aaronbrethorst »

trymas wrote: post #132
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dunno. Probably not. But it's not worth the time or energy to deal with them beyond giving them back their two lattes worth of money.

Probably not worth it to argue indeed. Though coming from a country where $10 can get you 5 lattes :), I would not give those money back. Nevertheless I payed taxes for that income. It's pennies, but I have known/seen too many people who try to haggle extensively, who need to be reminded about common sense.

I get you, and agree on general principle, but I also have to consider what my time is worth. I once calculated that even a single customer service interaction cost me far more than ten dollars at my standard billing rate. If I want to argue with implacable assholes, I'll go pitch a VC or something.

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

#136

Post by derphilipp »

anotherevan wrote: post #85

I am the original author of LatexMk[1], a Perl script that runs Latex the correct number of times to ensure all cross-references and such were resolved. It can also run continuously with a previewer and several other goodies. I wrote it around 1993 to scratch my own itch, adapting it from a little script called “Go” by David J. Musliner. At the time I was using a literate programming tool that generated Latex from C…

Thank you very much for your work, latexmk really helped me out when I wrote my masters thesis.

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

#137

Post by dagss »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #66
haberman wrote: post #36

MP3 importing code for the Audacity audio editor. I wrote this in 2002. https://github.com/audacity/audacity/blob/master/src/import/... Amusingly, a TODO I put is still there: /* TODO: get rid of this by adding fixed-point support to SampleFormat. * For now, we allocate temporary float buffers to convert the fixed * point samples into something we can feed to the WaveTrack. Allocating * big blocks of data like this i…

A great example of why we tell people to forget using a substandard approach and language for "quick and dirty code that will probably get thrown away." A lot of long-lasting code started out exactly that way. ;)

You neglect something I think is very important: You do not normally know up front what code will live and not.

If you carefully (over-)engineer everything you will perhaps not get time to write all those short-lived failures that preceded that long-lasting success.

Of course I wish that piece of code that I hacked 3 years ago and never got around to refactor was better done the first time! But that kind of thinking ignores the fact that if my mentality had been "perfect up front" then what I would have spent all my time perfecting was the previous piece of code, the one I have long since deleted. I never would have gotten around to writing the hacky code I kept.

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

#138

Post by lifthrasiir »

Transdate [1], a Python library for handling Korean lunisolar calendar, is probably the oldest (released on 2005-03) code I have ever written that is still in use.

[1] https://pypi.python.org/pypi/transdate/1.1.1 (the initial version was released in the other form)

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

#140

Post by peterburkimsher »

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.
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