My 1991 conversion of Life & Death released for Commodore Amiga and Atari ST - I occasionally notice that some people are still playing it on emulators, etc.
Ask HN: Oldest code you have written that is still in use?
351–360 of 363 posts
Re: Ask HN: Oldest code you have written that is still in use?
#352My 1991 conversion of Life & Death released for Commodore Amiga and Atari ST - I occasionally notice that some people are still playing it on emulators, etc.
I do miss the old PDS cross-assembler hardware/software. Visual Studio just isn't the same...
Re: Ask HN: Oldest code you have written that is still in use?
#353ToneLoc (a war dialer), written in 1991, last version released 1994 before going to prison: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ToneLoc People still have modems???
Fascinating story. Is it true that it got you banned from the Internet? That's cruel.
It's true, I wasn't allowed to use the Internet (or any computer network) from 2000-2002.
Re: Ask HN: Oldest code you have written that is still in use?
#354Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Very interesting, thank you. What do you do now?
I do software consulting in building automation and control systems, but mostly I build a mouth operated game controller for quadriplegics called the quadstick. That has been the most fun thing I've ever done.
Re: Ask HN: Oldest code you have written that is still in use?
#355Stuff I've written independently:
MailSend ... a command-line SMTP mailer I sold starting in 1997 (with the same name as some other command-line mailers ) is still in use by some of my oldest customers. It doesn't directly support SSL/TLS, but a handful are still able to use it.
I made the AWK ( compiled AWK ) source available a few years ago:
http://www.mailsend-online.com/blog/mailsend-is-free.html
My lightweight open source command-line MP3 player for Windows that I wrote in 2009 is still being actively downloaded and used. I've seen that a couple of people are bundling it with their home-brewed games to play music and sound-effects.
https://lawlessguy.wordpress.com/2015/06/27/update-to-a-comm...
Re: Ask HN: Oldest code you have written that is still in use?
#356Re: Ask HN: Oldest code you have written that is still in use?
#357Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I wasn't trying to comment directly on the specifics of xkas - I just think this is a perfect illustration of how backwards-incompatibilities that means users can't just upgrade and keep working introduce friction against upgrading, and once you get too much friction significant portions of your userbase will stop upgrading at all. I think this lesson is really valuable in a wider context than xkas. Since you mention…
I remember they even fixed the kernel to make sure some old viruses can still run.
See http://www.computerworld.com/article/2554467/linux/torvalds-...
Re: Ask HN: Oldest code you have written that is still in use?
#358Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't even see how it's possible to produce good software that way. We don't know what we really want until we iterate over the design a few times. At least, that's the way it is with me. My first drafts have never been anything close to my ultimate designs. After you've been burned a few times, you start to get a feel for building interfaces that can be maintained while the entire design behind them is switched ou…
To me, legacy code has cost. Great cost. You can't just leave old code alone and the features remain. Any time you go to restructure some code, or support some other mode, or do some other kind of action, it ends up affecting this old code and you have to go and make changes to it as well. Then that old code breaks on a new version of the compiler, so you have more fixes to make. And it increases compilation times, b…
The goal is of course to support the legacy interfaces without having to keep using the legacy code behind them.
Re: Ask HN: Oldest code you have written that is still in use?
#359I wrote a hacky bash script back in 2000 to manage HalfLife dedicated servers (start, stop, edit basic config stuff) for a friend. This script (I initially called "hl.sh") is later renamed into "hl-monster.sh", and finally to "hl-monster-extended.sh" with ~15000 LOC, supporting 120+ different Games and is running on ~2000 really big servers around the world. This script is the core of a big international company now.…
Kinda funny that googling for "hl-monster.sh" or "hl-monster-extended.sh" yields precisely 1 result - this HN page.
The script probably never left the company.
Re: Ask HN: Oldest code you have written that is still in use?
#360Earlier quoted context omitted.
Open source is always well received. Also, there are people out there running GNUStep/Darwin!
I have tried open sourcing other stuff, and it's been completely overlooked. I guess you have to promote it somehow. But I've tried putting stuff on GitHub, and I don't think anyone ever looked at it. If it were to have an audience I'd do it.
Perhaps just put it on github, and just drop the link to it whenever you mention it in a comment here?
(Or just put a link in your HN profile, people can click through that easily.)