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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

#71
post #27
post #26

Boggles my mind when coders don't save everything they've ever written. It's easy to be a digital pack-rat without much consequence. That said, my first Java 1.02 programs from the 90's still compile and the old jars run surprisingly well too. Color me impressed!

It was quite different before the internet. I'm still holding out hope of finding some of my old BASIC programs from the 80s on a 5¼-inch floppy disk in my parents' basement. But they are probably gone.

> before the internet

Even before GitHub, probably. Dropbox was a big step forward, still.

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

#72
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.

Nice, didn't know about fernflower, thanks for the recommendation! I use JavaDecompile (JD-GUI)¹ too much and is already in my workflow, but from insights like this i see some nicer/better tools. 1 - JD-GUI - https://java-decompiler.github.io/

Seems convenient, I'll keep this in mind for whenever I may need this.

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

#73
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,…

Interestingly, i have a similar story. I created a database publishing platform exactly that time, a was given full control. I created it in Java, and added a JavaScript engine for scripting templates. The initial product was also side in a few months. It also runs to this day. The war file could be run by any Java server. The code, while old, was in a reasonable state, given some of the migrations. I never thought a…

There's nothing more permanent than a temporary fix put in while waiting for a permanent fix for a problem.

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

#75
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Phew, that was around the internet Java applets phase, if I recall it correctly?

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

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adoptium is a JVM from the Eclipse Foundation. They're hardly weird, even if the branding is. It's basically "people into JVMs not controlled or licenced by Oracle that work good". https://www.eclipse.org/membership/explore-membership/

I never realized it was from Eclipse! They've cleaned up the webpage where it's a bit more clear now. I always figured it was a weird consultancy or something like Gluon - where there was a paid product when you dig a little Thanks for clearing it up. Hope they rebrand and drop the Adoptium name eventually

It used to be called AdoptOpenJDK, and was a project that essentially just provided prebuilt binaries of OpenJDK.

But post several Oracle changes that I admittedly have not kept up with, they have grown in scope and also been forced to remove OpenJDK from their name. They went with Adoptium, to keep the Adopt part that got them famous.

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

#78

Not to be snarky but 2011 is yesterday for programming, no major shift. I'd imagine almost all code written there would be able to run today.

You've had a very different experience of the past 13 years if you've experienced no major shifts. Even the past year has had a whole big change with the advent of LLMs, nevermind the rise of the web, VSCode, typescript, rust, and more.

In 2011, Java was on version 7. We're on 22 now in 2024. There have been some paradigm shifts in Java during that time. Streams (Java 8), Lambda expressions (Java 9), the var keyword (Java 10), Records (Java 14), switch and yield (Java 12/14), instanceof (Java 16). Functional programming over OOP; Cloud and microservices, emphasis on security, DevX, concurrency.

Code written in 2011 still runs, but the world's changed around it.

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

#79

Not to be snarky but 2011 is yesterday for programming, no major shift. I'd imagine almost all code written there would be able to run today.

In the Java world, sure. Other programming language ecosystems tend to have tons of churn. For an anecdote, every TypeScript project I find from 2021 or earlier is simply impossible to build nowadays, meanwhile the ClojureScript code I dealt with in a previous job was able to survive 8 years worth of updates to libraries and the core language. I frequently ran into code that was last modified around 2013 because it just worked and didn't need any refactoring. (For reference, ClojureScript didn't have a public release until 2011)

For another anecdote, every Golang repository I've found that predates v2 modules is nearly impossible to build, especially if it contains dependencies that link straight to Google Code instead of GitHub. (As an exercise, try building the first public releases of etcd, prometheus, etc. They were super simple projects compared to what they are today, but you will have a tough time building them)

Java and most JVM languages are the rare exception IMO (unless the project uses Gradle). That's one of many reasons why I love working with the Java platform :)

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

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My salary was about 30k. Best deal ever lol

With software still running and being used, the company had a bargain.

The person you're replying to is not the GP
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