5 ms·

There is a lot to be said for systems that do their jobs despite their age, and which have been validated and refined over the course of decades. In many ways,

by jmbwell 10y ago

There is a lot to be said for systems that do their jobs despite their age, and which have been validated and refined over the course of decades. In many ways, I'd rather maintain an old, well tested system than a modern system with widely available exploits, conflicting commercial interests, and rapid obsolescence.

cmdrfred 10y ago
An abacus has an exceptionally small attack surface when you think about it.
- paulddraper 10y ago
  Amen. The principle of least power: use the least amount that you need. If an abacus suffices, you will reap the reliability and security rewards.
- jeff_marshall 10y ago
  Too true - both the negative (who wants to program an abacus), and the positive (there is no magic in this program/device). I feel like developers tend to favor the magic, due to the burden it relieves, without having to consider the negatives due to the way the business of software works.
  - userbinator 10y ago
    Not all developers, but I'd say that certainly the majority seem easily entranced by the "latest and greatest" especially in some areas of software; web development is the most prominent example to come to mind.
    - sotojuan 10y ago
      Maybe it's because most of the apps or programs web developers make don't last more than a few years.
    - Yxven 10y ago
      Web development has the most innovation because it is the least entrenched. It is not hard to write a bare-bones web application that produces output that can be read on browsers everywhere. Compare that to the difficulty of writing a cross-platform GUI framework. It's not even easy to write bindings for existing GUIs because it's hard to wrap C++ in a way that doesn't have you manually managing memory or discarding other language features and philosophies. This is why we're seeing the Electron approach to GUI apps grow. It's easier to write bindings for chromium and feed it HTML.
      - pjmlp 10y ago
        No, we are seeing Electron because Web hipsters never coded in anything else other than JavaScript.
      - WildUtah 10y ago
        Modern C++ pretty much avoids manual memory management (except in the few instances where you really want it) with smart pointers and STL.
  - ianamartin 10y ago
    Oh god, this. So much this. I'm dealing with it right now in a hardware migration. Local iron to AWS. There's so much magic that we can't effectively debug errors. The new system is extremely vanilla and it throws errors where you would want them to. The old system silently swallows them and creates invalid data. I'm not even talking about php or mysql. Magic is bad when it comes to replicability. I wish more people would take that into consideration when writing software. Your convenience for today is your headache for tomorrow. Be lazy. It's a good trait. But not too lazy.
- triplesec 10y ago
  Reminds me of Arthur C Clarke's Into the Comet. Warning: Wiki article is mostly plot spoiler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_the_Comet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_the_Comet
- Someone 10y ago
  Remotely: zero Locally: if you distract the person making the calculations for a second, it's easy to move a bead or two. Insider: easier than a computerized system for individual computations. Imagine how easy it is to move a few beads incorrectly when computing taxes on your own income statement and how much work it would be to detect that.
justanother 10y ago
This happens a lot more commonly than people might think. Not sure if this is still the case, but Florida DHSMV (motor vehicles department) used a Honeywell mainframe as recently as a few years ago, and the word around Disney World Ride & Show was that the parades in Magic Kingdom ran on a DEC PDP-10 as recently as the late 1990s and early 2000s. Both of these may no longer be true, but I haven't checked in awhile. Both of them might still be true...
fma 10y ago
The only reason I do it is job security. I prefer to know a version of something inside and out, all the strengths and weaknesses. I don't want to spend the time to learn something new if the current tech stack suffices - it's a risk. I'd rather spend that time building something. But if I don't upgrade/rewrite every few years, and I need to find a new job, the interviewees will look at it and think I'm a dinosaur - despite the fact I follow the latest trends through blog's and podcasts. My company is slowly upgrading all our application servers because what we were running is way past EOL. The ops team bitches and moans because the newer one is more unstable. Go figure.
- sotojuan 10y ago
  Yep. In a lot of parts of the industry, old and stable is seen as a negative by many. Maybe that's why people don't consider programming "engineering".
- kochthesecond 10y ago
  Yeah, well. A lot of those systems does it's job very well. But now they want to access it's data and calculations on an iOS and browser app. Suddenly it becomes unusable or blocks productivity.
  - intrasight 10y ago
    There's plenty of work available in wrapping legacy systems with modern APIs
kensai 10y ago
They are also probably unhackable by modern means.
s_q_b 10y ago
In many ways, I'd rather eat a flaming ball of excrement than work with 1960s technology again, especially when the code was written by programmers in the USG. These systems are horrible kludges. They're like the crumbling ruins of an ancient Roman city beneath a metropolis, beautiful only for their history. It's a nice place to visit. But you wouldn't want to live there.

by jmbwell 10y ago

cmdrfred 10y ago

An abacus has an exceptionally small attack surface when you think about it.

paulddraper 10y ago
Amen. The principle of least power: use the least amount that you need. If an abacus suffices, you will reap the reliability and security rewards.
jeff_marshall 10y ago
Too true - both the negative (who wants to program an abacus), and the positive (there is no magic in this program/device). I feel like developers tend to favor the magic, due to the burden it relieves, without having to consider the negatives due to the way the business of software works.
- userbinator 10y ago
  Not all developers, but I'd say that certainly the majority seem easily entranced by the "latest and greatest" especially in some areas of software; web development is the most prominent example to come to mind.
  - sotojuan 10y ago
    Maybe it's because most of the apps or programs web developers make don't last more than a few years.
  - Yxven 10y ago
    Web development has the most innovation because it is the least entrenched. It is not hard to write a bare-bones web application that produces output that can be read on browsers everywhere. Compare that to the difficulty of writing a cross-platform GUI framework. It's not even easy to write bindings for existing GUIs because it's hard to wrap C++ in a way that doesn't have you manually managing memory or discarding other language features and philosophies. This is why we're seeing the Electron approach to GUI apps grow. It's easier to write bindings for chromium and feed it HTML.
    - pjmlp 10y ago
      No, we are seeing Electron because Web hipsters never coded in anything else other than JavaScript.
    - WildUtah 10y ago
      Modern C++ pretty much avoids manual memory management (except in the few instances where you really want it) with smart pointers and STL.
- ianamartin 10y ago
  Oh god, this. So much this. I'm dealing with it right now in a hardware migration. Local iron to AWS. There's so much magic that we can't effectively debug errors. The new system is extremely vanilla and it throws errors where you would want them to. The old system silently swallows them and creates invalid data. I'm not even talking about php or mysql. Magic is bad when it comes to replicability. I wish more people would take that into consideration when writing software. Your convenience for today is your headache for tomorrow. Be lazy. It's a good trait. But not too lazy.
triplesec 10y ago
Reminds me of Arthur C Clarke's Into the Comet. Warning: Wiki article is mostly plot spoiler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_the_Comet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_the_Comet
Someone 10y ago
Remotely: zero Locally: if you distract the person making the calculations for a second, it's easy to move a bead or two. Insider: easier than a computerized system for individual computations. Imagine how easy it is to move a few beads incorrectly when computing taxes on your own income statement and how much work it would be to detect that.

justanother 10y ago

This happens a lot more commonly than people might think. Not sure if this is still the case, but Florida DHSMV (motor vehicles department) used a Honeywell mainframe as recently as a few years ago, and the word around Disney World Ride & Show was that the parades in Magic Kingdom ran on a DEC PDP-10 as recently as the late 1990s and early 2000s. Both of these may no longer be true, but I haven't checked in awhile. Both of them might still be true...

fma 10y ago

The only reason I do it is job security. I prefer to know a version of something inside and out, all the strengths and weaknesses. I don't want to spend the time to learn something new if the current tech stack suffices - it's a risk. I'd rather spend that time building something. But if I don't upgrade/rewrite every few years, and I need to find a new job, the interviewees will look at it and think I'm a dinosaur - despite the fact I follow the latest trends through blog's and podcasts. My company is slowly upgrading all our application servers because what we were running is way past EOL. The ops team bitches and moans because the newer one is more unstable. Go figure.

sotojuan 10y ago
Yep. In a lot of parts of the industry, old and stable is seen as a negative by many. Maybe that's why people don't consider programming "engineering".
kochthesecond 10y ago
Yeah, well. A lot of those systems does it's job very well. But now they want to access it's data and calculations on an iOS and browser app. Suddenly it becomes unusable or blocks productivity.
- intrasight 10y ago
  There's plenty of work available in wrapping legacy systems with modern APIs

kensai 10y ago

They are also probably unhackable by modern means.

s_q_b 10y ago

In many ways, I'd rather eat a flaming ball of excrement than work with 1960s technology again, especially when the code was written by programmers in the USG. These systems are horrible kludges. They're like the crumbling ruins of an ancient Roman city beneath a metropolis, beautiful only for their history. It's a nice place to visit. But you wouldn't want to live there.