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I found one of my first programs (Java, 2011) on the Wayback Machine and it runs

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Re: I found one of my first programs (Java, 2011) on the Wayback Machine and it runs

#51
post #2

One of the first programs I ever wrote - a program to find valid English crossword fills given a grid pattern with optional partial completions. This project came to mind recently and I looked around on the Wayback Machine. Turns out I posted the jar on MediaFire and linked to it on an old blog on Jan 2, 2011. Luckily, there was [_one capture_ of the jar on MediaFire]( https://web.archive.org/web/20240123154949/https…

EDIT: As a couple observant folks pointed out, the original MediaFire link actually still works, so WB machine saved the day by making it possible to find the link, but the jar was also still hosted on the today-internet :)

Re: I found one of my first programs (Java, 2011) on the Wayback Machine and it runs

#52

What a strong ad for Java

2011 for Java is nothing. I've used JDBC driver written for Java 1.4 (2002) in Java 17 and I absolutely sure that it'll work with Java 21 just as well. Java backwards compatibility is real and it works absolutely fine unless you do bad things.

Personally I consider 1.4.2 the point where java got stable, and had a true IO (java.nio), along with a decent JIT (hotspot)

Re: I found one of my first programs (Java, 2011) on the Wayback Machine and it runs

#53
post #34

My son found some of my old java code from 20 years ago and managed to get a couple of the programs to run, with some very minor modifications. The java applets not so much, because no browser has had support for applets for a decade or so.

Use appletviewer. I have something from 1998 which still runs using that.

I'll have to check it out, we spent a few minutes looking and it seemed like they don't ship it anymore, but I guess you can still get Java 8 from Oracle and it should include it.

Re: I found one of my first programs (Java, 2011) on the Wayback Machine and it runs

#54
post #12

If you are so inclined, a decompiler might be able to "recreate" a big part of the source code. IntelliJ IDEA's one (Fernflower) works well, its fork Vineflower seems like an interesting option too. Both are released under Apache 2. Fernflower works so well I don't always immediately notice I'm debugging decompiled code.

[deleted]

Re: I found one of my first programs (Java, 2011) on the Wayback Machine and it runs

#55
Wow, I did some work in summer 1996 in java, web applets! Would be awesome to find that again, but I think the chances are less than slim for that happening.

Actually I did some somewhat impressive graphical x86 assembly programs around 1994-95 which I would have really liked to see today, but I saw no value in those once I had done them. :/

Re: I found one of my first programs (Java, 2011) on the Wayback Machine and it runs

#56
post #47
post #4

The first major piece of code that I ever wrote was a publishing workflow management system for a major newspaper. It routed page images to presses and generated pdfs of each page in each edition of the newspaper and made pdfs of each day's newspaper editions and published them to a static website where they were archived. I was only allowed to use perl 4 to write this software and I wasn't allowed to use a database,…

Perl /4/ in 2002? When I learned perl in like 1995, 5 had been out for a bit already and it was hard to find a system with 4 installed... (perl 4 didn't have built in support for OO; did you roll your own system?)

To be fair it is perl, there was probably a library for it.

Re: I found one of my first programs (Java, 2011) on the Wayback Machine and it runs

#57
post #6

The wayback machine is pure nostalgia. Every time I go there I’m truly amazed at what it’s like to have a society wide memory that automatically captures these different moments of our lives. Old pictures I never thought I’d ever see again. Landing pages for old companies I’ve built and only a handful of my closest friends remember. Blog posts from long deleted places, times, and mental caverns. Just incredible.

Well you got me excited to check out my first homepage but I guess I predate the WM. When did it start archiving?

Re: I found one of my first programs (Java, 2011) on the Wayback Machine and it runs

#58

What a strong ad for Java

Java's maintained almost perfect backward compatibility. If you want code you wrote today to run in 10 more years, Java is probably the best choice. Most other languages have too much of a history of breaking changes, or if you pick C/C++, you'll have issues linking against an old UI library.

There are many other languages with a better lindy effect rating ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect), common lisp, erlang, fortran and more.

I won't doubt how java doing well, but other languages have it beat.

Re: I found one of my first programs (Java, 2011) on the Wayback Machine and it runs

#60

I have Objective-C software for iOS that was built for iOS 3 that still runs on the latest version of iOS and people still pay for it. Strange how language stability is an achievable goal.

Why don't you post the app store link? That's allowed.
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