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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?

#261

Post by Det_Jacobian »

slazaro wrote: post #201
Det_Jacobian wrote: post #181

I have the luck of having written GPU code on the base pixel shader on a title (Halo 4) that sold on the order of 10 million copies, first game I ever worked on. A back of the envelope calculation for how many times this code has been executed since 2012: 1e7 copies * 10 hours * 60 minutes * 60 seconds * 30fps * 1280 * 720 ~~ 300 quadrillion

According to Wolfram Alpha [1], it's 9953280000000000000, which is 10 quintillion! :O [1] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1e7+*+10+*+60+*+60+*+3...

Whoops, off by 30!

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

#262

Post by brlewis »

gotrythis wrote: post #257

I bet I have most people beat here, especially with web software. I released the first content management system for websites back in about 1995. It was a fully database driven system with different post types, much like WordPress in design, and editable page content. About 15 years ago, I wrote an entire web-based system for managing an online grocery delivery company. The whole site runs off of version 2 of that co…

December 10, 1994 was my first checkin of cgiemail: http://web.mit.edu/wwwdev/src/cgi/RCS/cgiemail.c,v

I found at least one live instance of it still running: www.uwo.ca/cgi-bin/cgiemail/somedept/questions3.txt

I'm not sad that it's mostly replaced.

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

#263

Post by mosburger »

Udo wrote: post #187

I posit if you want to make sure your code survives you, write video game code. Nevertheless, my own examples are all non-games. In the early nineties I wrote a program in Turbo Pascal to manage grades and print report cards, I heard one elementary school in my home town was using this until 2012. On one of my first web programming jobs, I made a cold fusion-like template interpreter and ecommerce engine in C, that w…

> I posit if you want to make sure your code survives you, write video game code.

I dunno, firmware seems like a pretty safe bet too. I wrote seek algorithm firmware for Quantum's Atlas series of SCSI disk drives in the late 1990s, I suspect there are still a few of those spinning out there somewhere.

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

#264

Post by pc86 »

near wrote: post #106

There's an entire community of video game hackers (smwcentral.net) using a cross-assembler I wrote in 2001 named xkas. I added a few minor patches and by early 2004 I had released the final version, v06. I never really intended for anyone to use it seriously. I made it for myself, but went ahead and posted it online anyway. It is a 1500-line single-file, nearly-commentless, nearly-spaceless abomination of code with n…

> one user proved it was Turing complete and wrote a Brainfuck parser in it.

Of course they did

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

#265

Post by pc86 »

user_rob wrote: post #204

I designed some of the electronics and wrote some firmware code for the Bell AH-1S Cobra in 1978 1979. The system is still flying as I see the external parts of the system in news clips. Does that count? Beat that! Mean looking image of a parked up one - the red bag covers part of the system: http://www.vaq136.com/misawa/cobra73418-017b.jpg

That's pretty neat. Were you working for a defense contractor at the time?

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

#266

Post by near »

ReedJessen wrote: post #145
near wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I couldn't find said example (sorry), but I did find one of his other examples of abusing the assembler: http://bin.smwcentral.net/u/1686/boredom.asm You won't believe me unless you try it for yourself, but ... download xkas v06 here: http://www.romhacking.net/utilities/269/ Then download the above boredom.asm. And now run the following on the command-line: touch boredom.sfc xkas boredom.asm boredom.sfc Note again th…

I'm not a black hat, what is going on?

It's a native code execution exploit.

He exploits the parser to corrupt the stack frame, and executes raw x86 instructions embedded in that file.

How exactly it converts that pile of gibberish into a valid x86 program is beyond even my comprehension.

Alcaro's always been a wizard at stuff like this. Here's an example of an SNES ROM image he crafted to execute native x86 code from inside ZSNES: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3SOYneC7mU (Yes, you can potentially get a real PC virus from loading up an SNES ROM in ZSNES. Or a specially crafted source code file in xkas v06.)

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

#267

Post by i336_ »

gotrythis wrote: post #257

I bet I have most people beat here, especially with web software. I released the first content management system for websites back in about 1995. It was a fully database driven system with different post types, much like WordPress in design, and editable page content. About 15 years ago, I wrote an entire web-based system for managing an online grocery delivery company. The whole site runs off of version 2 of that co…

It would be very interesting to be able to browse through a site known to be running off a 15-year-old CMS.

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

#268

Post by shthed »

kevrone wrote: post #241

In 2009-ish I wrote a Java-based templating system for Autosys' Job Information Language. If you don't know it, Autosys is a horrible, horrible, job management and scheduling system. You define these little files (.jil extension) that specify not only the job definition (command, user, cron-like schedule, etc.), but also its dependencies (which job must run before this one, what runs after...). Nothing wrong with tha…

Ahaha damn I hate autosys .jil files! We are still using them even though we replaced Autosys years ago :(

We have an old Oracle PL/SQL system which wrote out these .jil files which were to be picked up by Autosys, built in around 1998. When Autosys was replaced we didn't touch the old PL/SQL code, .jil file parser was written so the jobs could be scheduled through Quartz instead.

Would have been easier to replace the whole job creation and scheduling system instead of just the Autosys part.

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

#269

Post by justinhj »

In the mid 90s I wrote some A* path finding code for a game and in the process wrote a programming tutorial about it. The page got a lot of traffic and requests for code, so around 98 I wrote a version of it using a simple api but spent a lot of time making it solid and fast. It was used by several major game companies including Activision and Relic Entertainment as well as indie games and student projects.

A few times I've started a game programming job and found my code there already.

Recently someone ported it to C# where it can live on in Unity games.

https://github.com/justinhj/astar-algorithm-cpp

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

#270

Post by caf »

near wrote: post #260
shthed wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like this: http://www.romhacking.net/utilities/269/ "Newer versions have been released, however contain poor documentation, and removal of features that can be found in v0.06. Version 0.06 is still considered the best version available by most ROM hackers until the author addresses the shortcomings of subsequent versions."

There's a reason I stopped associating with that scene/site years ago. Almost everyone in it is toxic and stuck in their rebellious teenage years. Case in point: http://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php/topic,21797.html The newer versions are called bass, and you can compare yourself here: http://byuu.org/tool/bass/ There is full documentation of every possible command, the code is readable by human beings (eg varia…

This is a great illustration of why, once you've got a user base of any size, backwards-compatibility needs to be one of your touchstones.

(eg. if you add {macro}, continue to support !macro as well)

Sometimes you do find that you've painted yourself into a corner, though.

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