11–20 of 48 posts
This is based on fundamentalky wrong assumption that software is something like a hammer or a bulldozer. Software is more like a plumbing. It a) wears out b) requires maintenance c) people maintaining it is integrated part of the whole system.
This is based on fundamentalky wrong assumption that software is something like a hammer or a bulldozer. Software is more like a plumbing. It a) wears out b) requires maintenance c) people maintaining it is integrated part of the whole system.
This is based on fundamentalky wrong assumption that software is something like a hammer or a bulldozer. Software is more like a plumbing. It a) wears out b) requires maintenance c) people maintaining it is integrated part of the whole system.
Please explain how a set of instructions for a computer can "wear out" and "require maintenance", Word 2007 still writes documents fine enough for me
I do have a project that's been running about 25-years. But it's not static - new features are added, bugs are fixed, and it just keeps going. Some of the code and the overall architecture are original but there's plenty of new. That said though, the vast majority of projects I've been on are probably no longer in existence. This is why I take a more casual approach to most projects - I see it as somewhat temporary a…
We’re coming up on 50 years for Space Invaders. We can say that it’s endured because: - it’s self-contained: it works without dependencies, and with the hardware it was designed for - there’s an ongoing need: peope want to continue playing Space Invaders - it’s transposable: the environment it runs in can be recreated through additional layers (emulators here) - it’s recreatable: the core concepts behind Space Invade…
Modern SaaS apps can't be run once the company shuts it down. You don't have the code, not even the executable.
This is based on fundamentalky wrong assumption that software is something like a hammer or a bulldozer. Software is more like a plumbing. It a) wears out b) requires maintenance c) people maintaining it is integrated part of the whole system.
Please explain how a set of instructions for a computer can "wear out" and "require maintenance", Word 2007 still writes documents fine enough for me
The real hardware gets old, wears out, parts become difficult and perhaps even impossible to source.
The operating system accumulates known vulnerabilities until it's no longer safe to connect to anything.
You can work around the latter two problems with emulation, but it's never the same--display technology if nothing else is different and presents differently. Emulation is dependent on the fidelity of the emulation. It's much harder to make it exactly cycle-and-timing accurate, though in most cases (like Word 2007) it doesn't matter.
The instructions might exist, but they are not runnable without other supporting infrastructure.
This also ignores programs that are wholly reliant on third party compute and instructions you have no access to that can be shut down and no longer available, like your MMOs.
We’re coming up on 50 years for Space Invaders. We can say that it’s endured because: - it’s self-contained: it works without dependencies, and with the hardware it was designed for - there’s an ongoing need: peope want to continue playing Space Invaders - it’s transposable: the environment it runs in can be recreated through additional layers (emulators here) - it’s recreatable: the core concepts behind Space Invade…
In honor of thr 40th anniversary of this hack, I recently played the stock version in an emulator on a web page. Code lives on, I suppose.
This is based on fundamentalky wrong assumption that software is something like a hammer or a bulldozer. Software is more like a plumbing. It a) wears out b) requires maintenance c) people maintaining it is integrated part of the whole system.
But on the other hand, my 1993 1 character patch to the Linux kernel was replaced in around 96 or 97. I hope to whatever benevolent Supreme being exists that the crap pyth*n code I added to Second Life has been replaced. No one still uses Palm Pilots or Handspring Treos anymore, so I doubt that code has much life in it. Virtually every web app I wrote is dead, but they were fun to write, so whatever. And the code I added to a couple of satellites is dead (though my ground station code is still alive.) I bet that some of the avionics code in the cockpit is hard to update as well.
So... it depends... my nuke plant code still has another decade probably and my old room-mate's anti-lock braking code will probably outlast us all. Embedded systems are probably more long-lived than the Facebook front page. Some are just hard to update cause you can't easily get to the machine, others are hard due to regulatory or compliance reasons.
use COBOL..