Ask HN: What's the oldest piece of software still in use? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What's the oldest piece of software still in use?

#11

Post by davidw » Tue, Jul 30, 2013, 1:23 PM UTC

This seems relevant:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/249951/if_it_aint_broke_dont_...

Re: Ask HN: What's the oldest piece of software still in use?

#12

Post by zarify » Tue, Jul 30, 2013, 1:23 PM UTC

I was doing some work for a friend of mine late last year and he was still running his DOS-based accounting software from 1987 I think. I can't remember the name of it though. He wouldn't abandon it, so now that he has a new computer he's running it in a VM, including a virtual parallel printer since it wouldn't recognise his new one.

I still tease him about it.

Re: Ask HN: What's the oldest piece of software still in use?

#13

Post by 67726e » Tue, Jul 30, 2013, 1:24 PM UTC

There was an article a few months back about a company in Texas using a very old computer dating to 1948: http://www.pcworld.com/article/249951/if_it_aint_broke_dont_...

Re: Ask HN: What's the oldest piece of software still in use?

#14

Post by robmcm » Tue, Jul 30, 2013, 1:25 PM UTC

Lotus notes!

Re: Ask HN: What's the oldest piece of software still in use?

#15

Post by TomT » Tue, Jul 30, 2013, 1:25 PM UTC

I know of a Government organisation still using 25 year old software running on VAX/VMS ! Hardware support is the main reason they are getting rid of it !

Re: Ask HN: What's the oldest piece of software still in use?

#16

Post by Piskvorrr » Tue, Jul 30, 2013, 1:25 PM UTC

Prehistorik 2 (1993) even displays a notice on startup "wow, this game still runs in 2013", blisfully unaware that it's inside DosBox on an Android tablet.

So indeed, the oldest software will probably be running inside a VM.

Re: Ask HN: What's the oldest piece of software still in use?

#17

Post by pdw » Tue, Jul 30, 2013, 1:27 PM UTC

chewxy wrote: post #8

stevekinney wrote: post #3

For a lot of people in non-technical professions it might actually be Windows XP. That is, of course, if we're putting aside some of the basic UNIX tools that probably haven't changed since the 1970s—which I think is fair.

I believe that honour goes to dc (if you're in linux, you can still use dc).

In Linux, "dc" will be GNU dc, which would have been written late 80s or early 90s, like most other GNU utilities. And it would have been maintained/modified over the years.

(A better example would be the bsdgames collection. It's a lot older and has barely been touched over the years.)

Re: Ask HN: What's the oldest piece of software still in use?

#18

Post by senthilnayagam » Tue, Jul 30, 2013, 1:29 PM UTC

Foxpro/Clipper Apps running on DOS , there are couple of shops using them still in India

Re: Ask HN: What's the oldest piece of software still in use?

#19

Post by killercup » Tue, Jul 30, 2013, 1:30 PM UTC

chewxy wrote: post #8

stevekinney wrote: post #3

For a lot of people in non-technical professions it might actually be Windows XP. That is, of course, if we're putting aside some of the basic UNIX tools that probably haven't changed since the 1970s—which I think is fair.

I believe that honour goes to dc (if you're in linux, you can still use dc).

Nice find! Man page footer on current OS X says 1997-03-25.

I looked at some other man pages from ls, cat, tar and the like and the oldest that I found was rm, from January 28, 1999.

UPDATE! rmdir's man page is from May 31, 1993! Though I'm sure the actual code was updated since then.

Re: Ask HN: What's the oldest piece of software still in use?

#20

Post by edw519 » Tue, Jul 30, 2013, 1:30 PM UTC

I wrote the lot traceability module of Compufact's ERP package in 1987. 3 years ago, I engaged a company that still used that software. Just for fun, I searched for my initials in their repository. Good news: that software was still being used. Not so good news: one of my programs had been changed 120 times, including bug fixes. I pretended that it was written by another "edw".