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> Think about the greatest, most beautiful cathedrals in Europe. Some of them took more than 500 years to build. Can you imagine the grandeur and scope of the c
by blt 11y ago
> Think about the greatest, most beautiful cathedrals in Europe. Some of them took more than 500 years to build. Can you imagine the grandeur and scope of the computer programs we will build over the next 500 years?
Now that is inspirational.
I've managed to spend my software development career mostly writing programs that I feel are meaningful and useful, and I'm very thankful for that. But nothing I've written is going to last more than 10 or 20 years. I would love to produce an artifact that lasts centuries some day.
So far, discounting stuff that only lives because of some legacy hardware system, we've got maybe LINPACK and... what else?
- ssprang 11y agoHow about TeX?
- andyraskin 11y agoIn my opinion, it's fair to consider API-connected services — and maybe even the Web itself (which did not exist when Perlis first said this) — as "computer programs." In that sense, we're all building this cathedral together.
- iamcurious 11y agovim and emacs. they will live forever in infinite different reincarnations.
- veddox 11y agoInspirational, but to be honest, I highly doubt it. Software has an extremely short life cycle compared to stone... The only softwarily architected object I can think of that might come close to the endurance and grandeur of a medieval cathedral is the Internet - but even that is not half a century old yet.