Ask HN: Oldest code you have written that is still in use? • Hacker News Board

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

#301

Post by HeyLaughingBoy » Wed, May 18, 2016, 7:34 PM UTC

andyjdavis wrote: post #48

analog31 wrote: post #16

Roughly a decade. The VB6 program that I wrote to test a prototype of a measurement instrument, is still used in the factory, supporting manufacturing of the released product. It's a couple thousand lines, and nobody wants to touch it with a ten foot pole, but it also has no known bugs, and will live for the remaining lifetime of the product.

>no known bugs I don't think I have ever heard that phrase. Every non-trivial piece of software I have ever worked on has a collection of bugs that just get carried forward indefinitely ie hard to fix, only affects a small number of people and there is an easy work around so just ignore it. The idea of having zero open bugs is... foreign.

I wrote a set of Windows device drivers in the 1998-1999 time frame for machinery control software that has been in continuous use since around 2002 (when the product was released). There has been a grand total of one bug reported. And that one required a hardware fault before it would be visible.

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

#302

Post by dagss » Wed, May 18, 2016, 8:01 PM UTC

nickpsecurity wrote: post #283

dagss wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"You neglect something I think is very important: You do not normally know up front what code will live and not." It's actually mentioned in my post and the whole point. "If you carefully (over-)engineer everything you will perhaps not get time" This is true. You can spend vast amounts of over-engineering instead of hacking something together that's "perfect up front." This is a false dilemma, though, as simply takin…

I was answering to "using a substandard approach and language" -- if that is an option that's on the table I am assuming the time savings would be substantial (order of 50%). I do of course agree that one should often "Taking a little more time to think about or improve some code".

It seems like you almost say that it is better to be good at coding than bad at coding. Which I think nobody will ever disagree with. What I was talking about was assuming senior coders, knowing what they are doing, who think about actively choosing a shortcut.

I don't think it's a strict dichotomy, but I think there is a scale. For every project you can choose how well to do the job, and compare it to the importance the task seem to have and the budget it ought to have in developer time spent on it; then find relevant short-cut which does not dig you too much deeper in the hole. I usually try to figure out "how would I refactor this later to clean it up", make sure it can be done without too much pain, then if I can see the path clearly it's OK to take the shortcut if needed.

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

#303

Post by rietta » Wed, May 18, 2016, 8:19 PM UTC

The oldest code that I wrote that I suspect is still in use is RoboGen, an editor for robots.txt files, that I wrote in Visual C++ 6 with MFC. I remember working on it while not paying enough attention in my high school physics class. We were allowed to have laptops in class at the time. You can see it at https://rietta.com/robogen/.

The oldest code that I distributed - it was written by a friend of mine - is Whois Web Professional which was a whois client written in VB6. I know it's still in use because I have to maintain the version file on my website and even keep my server running Apache because its update checking was written by a 12 year old in WinSock and doesn't handle the protocol very well. If I change anything, the VB6 program crashes on startup and I get emails about it. You can see it at https://rietta.com/whoisweb/.

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

#304

Post by lamontcg » Wed, May 18, 2016, 8:27 PM UTC

lamontcg wrote: post #154

Last I checked the nmap autoconf script still had code that I wrote back in 1996 when I ported what Fyodor wrote up in Phrack to Solaris, NetBSD, Digital Unix, SunOS and possibly HP-UX and/or IRIX. It probably still has support for doing "RST" scanning (and i think determining if the port is open backed on the windows size in the packet that comes back, which worked on several TCP stacks back then...).

on rereading this today, i remembered it was the ACK/th_win portscanning method that I added to nmap (after independently re-discovering it), not the RST scanning method which I think was already in the Phrack article... lotta brain cells got a little foggy in the past 20 years...

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

#305

Post by jlgaddis » Wed, May 18, 2016, 8:39 PM UTC

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…

I've still got a web site up that hasn't been modified since 1997. I'm waiting for it to turn 21 so I can celebrate with a beer.

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

#306

Post by fdavison » Wed, May 18, 2016, 9:20 PM UTC

zippergz wrote: post #83

fdavison wrote: post #73

Late 70's. I wrote the operating system for the Control Pak EM system sold as the Barber Colman Network Supervisor building automation system. Thousands of systems were installed and many are still in use. By cracky. Er, what was the question again? http://www.controlpak.com/network.htm

That link doesn't work for me. I'd love to read more about this system. Are there any other links you know of?

I left the company in '87 and lost contact with them years ago. The system was 8085 based, ran a preemptive RTOS written in PL/M and assembler derived from RMX-86. The network was optically isolated RS-485 9600 baud. It was configured using Template Block programming, where the blocks acted like little HP RPN calculators that were linked together to build a control sequence. Its primary distinction was its ability to do user generated "direct digital control logic". The OS fit in 32k.

Barber Colman OEM'd the main logic board from Control Pak and put them in their own box.

Barber Colman's QC engineers were hard core SOB's and they put that system through the wringer, trying to break it in a million ways. They had a special smile when they had found another bug or a screw terminal they could zap with a spark generator and lock the system up. They were unhappy when they could not break it anymore. That's why there are still some Supervisors running today. They are tough as nails. I owe those guys a lot.

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

#307

Post by watermelon59 » Wed, May 18, 2016, 9:39 PM UTC

QuickSynergy: https://github.com/cesarbs/quicksynergy-gtk

A simple and straighforward UI to use synergy on Linux for the most common use cases.

I haven't properly updated it in years (made some small changes last year though) but I know it's still in use e.g. my wife was surprised to learn it's quite popular at her company.

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

#308

Post by Joof » Wed, May 18, 2016, 9:52 PM UTC

wscott wrote: post #210

In 1990, during a summer internship at GE, I wrote a program that scheduled electric motor production at like 7 factories around the country. You would download the next weeks worth of orders from their timeshare system, which seemed ancient then. Someone had done a time-motion study of each motor model and determined how much time each motor needed in different stations. They wanted each day's schedule to use roughl…

Haha. Crazy. Scheduling is a pretty well known problem; I wonder how close to ideal you got.

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

#309

Post by dreamaddict » Wed, May 18, 2016, 9:58 PM UTC

oh damn oh damn it's still up!

https://www.magnamund.org/risingsun/February2000/Bookkeeper....

I got my wisdom teeth taken out when I was in high school, and coded this in a weekend while eating Percocet and tapioca pudding. I had no idea it was even still for download! It doesn't matter now, because I believe the Magnamund books are being re-released in a more modern, integrated package...but there it is!

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

#310

Post by dreamaddict » Wed, May 18, 2016, 10:00 PM UTC

Oh wow...

https://www.magnamund.org/risingsun/February2000/Bookkeeper....

I got my wisdom teeth taken out when I was in high school, and coded this in a weekend while eating Percocet and tapioca pudding. I had no idea it was even still for download. It actually works very well for what it is (an interactive sheet of paper for use with a book)...still in use? Probably not, but I am amazed that it is still there.