311–320 of 363 posts
So I bet I win the number of copies still being used by nearly 20 year old code among the comments here... probably something between a quarter to half a billion of those laptops still in use...
The embedded systems code that I wrote for an Opthalmic Ultrasound in 1989 is still running. Once code becomes FDA approved, you don't change it.
And that's why medical software is so buggy.
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…
This is great, I hope you retained 100% rights and are the one raking in that $? Considering the rise of SSD's, what's your prediction of how quickly your revenue will decline?
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?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Certainly, backward compatibility is critical and has always been a weakness of mine. I've always been an idealist there. But in xkas' case, this was code from before I really learned how to program; let alone design a proper parser. This would be like asking for strict compatibility between Linux 0.01 and Linux 3.0. I understand how SMWC became trapped in a cycle of using xkas v06, but any new projects really have n…
Since you mention Linux, this is why Linus has the "no regressions" policy - if something works on kernel N then it should also work on kernel N+1, so that people can upgrade their kernel and not worry about something breaking in userspace. (I think there is actually a very good chance that an a.out binary compiled for Linux 0.01 would still work today.)
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…
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We had a guy who wrote the other 14900 loc in a similar situation and made the whole thing really crappy. He used to say we cannot blame him because he inherited the crappy 100 loc in the first place.
After a few hundred new lines ones would think a rewrite might have been more appropriate.
From 1994-2001 I worked (in a small team) on a C++/Paradox school administration system; it's still in use today in hundreds of public schools in South Australia. I think they've tried to replace it via tender at least once, but haven't found an affordable / suitable replacement. It was quite amusing to get invoices from my daughter's (born in 1996) school produced by this program on a format I had laid out. There's…
I'd be curious to know how many of these programs/scripts/etc. have easter eggs hidden in them. It seems like you're the only one to mention it so far.
I wrote an in-MUD game for a Wheel of Time-themed MUD around 2005; I stopped in last year to see how things were going and was pleasantly surprised to see that not only were my game and helpfile still in the MUD, but that there was an ongoing game as I logged in. Satisfying to know that something I made over ten years ago is still being enjoyed.
Mind explaining the in-MUD game? Was it an adaptation of Foxes and Snakes?