4 ms·

Apparently, employers are still asking for Windows 95 and Windows 3.1 skills

22 points by talbina 16y ago

silentbicycle 16y ago
How many point-of-sale systems have you seen that run on Windows 3.1 or old curses-ish UIs? I'm sure it's even more common out of public view: in airport ticket kiosks, warehouse inventory systems, and the like. I saw my share of anachronistic systems working for a Midwestern public library system. Legacy code hell doesn't just apply to codebases.
- ugh 16y ago
  ATMs!
- mahmud 16y ago
  LOL @curses; those are Borland BGI and Turbo Graphics, man. To run curses at that time, you needed a 25k Sun Workstation.
  - nitrogen 16y ago
    Some of them probably were curses-based, running on a central server feeding a dozen Wyse terminals around the building.
csomar 16y ago
Last year I worked for a company that runs a huge (hundred of thousands of lines) Ms Access 97 software. The migration to Access 2003 needs lot of changes and (worse) they don't have a version control tool, schema of the application, any documentation... The code is a mess and written by bad programmers. So what to do? Start programming for Office 2007 from scratch? This decision took them around 2 years after failing to integrate their access tables with Microsoft SQL (The speed is insanely slow for large corporations).
- chime 16y ago
  I need to find companies/projects like these. I would have loved to solve this problem in one way or another. a) Rewrite as a web-app in platform of choice. b) Put the entire DB in RAM on a really fast Windows server using SuperVolume. I'm guessing the MDB is less than 16GB in size. Setup Citrix/XenApp on it and deploy MS Access 97 as a standalone Xen application. Users only need to log on to http://citrix.company.com http://citrix.company.com and click the "Access 97" icon. It will launch Access as a local app but it actually runs on the server. You get local disk speeds on the DB with minimal network usage. XenApp licenses are very cheap compared to even new Office licenses, let alone a full rewrite. If users do not need to change the Access 97 code/queries, you can deploy Access runtime instead of the full-access. c) I'm guessing they already tried to move the tables to MS SQL while just linking it from Access 97. If that isn't possible because the code uses tons of Access specific queries, mirror every table to MS SQL periodically, depending on the frequency of updates. Convert the slowest read-only reports to use the data from SQL while data-entry continues to use Access 97 tables. d) Break up the single Access DB into multiple DBs if possible. If Finance and Warehouse modules share almost nothing in common, they don't need to be on the same DB. If the 'employee' table is used to authenticate logins, put that table on MS SQL and link it from both Finance.mdb and Warehouse.mdb. e) Implement a decent ERP system if this application is really core to the company's operation. MS Dynamics NAV would probably be their best bet.
  - csomar 16y ago
    Thanks for your insightful comment. Here are my comments on your points. a) They have currently started doing it. b) Companies don't need it. They aren't really bothered with Access 97 and Windows 2000 or XP. All they need is our application. Low OS/Application means low and cheap hardware. c) Tried the simple linking in MS Access, no improvement in speed. We need to re-write all the queries from scratch. Many problems showed and since the code base is huge, rewriting from scratch seemed more feasible and easier. d) The application is huge, it has dozen of DBs e) I don't know what you are talking about, but will do a little research.
    - chime 16y ago
talbina 16y ago
And Windows 3.1 also: http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=%22Windows+3.1%22&l= http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=%22Windows+3.1%22&l= They may have been copying and pasting the same posting for years. And these are the ones who glance over resumes to see who is qualified. That's very disturbing and discouraging.
miles 16y ago
Hey, don't be hatin' on Win9x - it's allegedly got greater market share than the iPad or Blackberry: http://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=10 http://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share....
- talbina 16y ago
  Does the internet even "work" with Windows 95/98?
  - sliverstorm 16y ago
    Totally. 98 was supported by Firefox all the way through version 2, IIRC
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - chaosmachine 16y ago
    Opera 9.5 works on Windows95. Possibly later versions, as well. http://www.opera.com/support/kb/view/886/ http://www.opera.com/support/kb/view/886/
  - tbrownaw 16y ago
    I remember it working with 3.1 even, although it wasn't built in (needed something called Trumpet Winsock). '98se had connection sharing (I thought I remembered that '95 did too, but Wikipedia says no... maybe it's that it came with something to install on '95 machines that would let them be clients? I know for a while we had an XP machine with the modem, and a '95 machine that could see the internet through it.), which did for your dial-up much the same thing that your home router does now for your cable/dsl.
  - mahmud 16y ago
    Did you not exist 10 years ago? Sheesh. I still get Windows 98 hits in my server logs, mostly zombie boxes running bots.
mediaman 16y ago
Many of the postings for 95 and 3.1 appear to be in the field of health care. Perhaps this is an important message to companies attempting to create rapid innovation in the health sector...
- _delirium 16y ago
  If it's anything like the way specialist science-lab IT works, I can definitely see that. There's plenty of chemistry labs with ancient OSs on some machines because they have some piece of equipment that doesn't have drivers for anything newer. Basically a disconnect between lifecycles: a good piece of chemistry equipment is supposed to last 20+ years, especially if it's doing something relatively routine and well-understood, whereas software seems not to usually be intended to stick around for 20 years.
  - silentbicycle 16y ago
    > Basically a disconnect between lifecycles: a good piece of chemistry equipment is supposed to last 20+ years, especially if it's doing something relatively routine and well-understood, whereas software seems not to usually be intended to stick around for 20 years. This is a good observation, and would probably make a great topic for a much larger discussion/essay.
    - mikecarlucci 16y ago
      Consistency is huge. It's amazing what some of those guys will get out of their equipment. I spent some time talking with a guy who builds data acquisition equipment. Most of his customers started using his sensors in the 80s and until the system either breaks beyond repair or the entire team of scientists has retired, they want to keep the exact same setup. Amazing dedication, but the benefits of testing with the same equipment over many years can lead to some great observations over the long term.
- blasdel 16y ago
  You don't understand -- this is the result of rapid innovation in the health sector. Stuff takes a long time to come to market!
gnubardt 16y ago
i'd rather work at taco bell
- talbina 16y ago
  Or Subway, unless you want to live on the toilet.
paulhart 16y ago
I believe some hotel interactive systems (i.e. through the TV) use Windows 95 or 98.
duck 16y ago
This shows the great disconnect between IT and HR at most companies.
TrevorBurnham 16y ago
OK, the support ones make some sense, but I'm baffled by the one that wants experience with Matlab and Windows 95. Who uses Matlab under Windows 95 today? A scientific organization that hasn't been able to buy new hardware for more than a decade?
- eru 16y ago
  Who says they that they are using Windows 95 and Matlab on the same machine?
- ramchip 16y ago
  Assuming it's on the same machine: perhaps they have an instrument which runs on Windows 95 and they do some light data processing, or use Matlab to make it interoperate with another device? We've had a similar need in my lab, although it was Windows 2000. We buy new machines alright, but some instruments can't be easily upgraded due to the computer being integrated with it, the drivers being proprietary and specific to the OS, etc.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
NathanKP 16y ago
Windows 95 is still used extensively in embedded programming due to the unparalleled direct hardware access that it provides. When you are developing code for devices that use 8086, or even older FPGA's, you don't need the latest OS. In fact, the newer versions of Windows have more security and device layers which block the operation of the older programs used for uploading code to those older microprocessors. As a result, some of the old chipsets can only be programmed using old software which only works on 95. For a business that does embedded programming it isn't feasible to switch to a new chipset that would require a complete code rewrite just so that they can use a newer OS. Interestingly embedded programming is also an extremely high paying job because there aren't that many people who can do it.
- heyjonboy 16y ago
  Why wouldn't you just use Linux for embedded systems? Seems wasteful to use a GUI-based OS for something that will most likely be a single-purpose device.
  - mahmud 16y ago
    Toolchain and development cycle. Windows 95 systems programming is trivial, and not in a good way. You can access privileged system registers and memory areas directly, until you crash your box. Once you learn how to write a VxD it's a matter of tweaking it for other purposes, since the great difficulty lies in just getting the skeleton to work.
    - nitrogen 16y ago
      Linux is mostly that easy, in my experience. It may be easier, since there are probably already drivers for most of your chips. At any rate, once you have a skeleton kernel mode driver, it's just a matter of tweaking it for other purposes.
stretchwithme 16y ago
I was already to laugh about this when I saw the first ad was for a job in my home town! Actually, it wouldn't surprise me if there are jobs out there that require knowledge of DOS. It seems nothing ever truly dies.
- hernan7 16y ago
  Was it Joel that said "obsolete hardware goes in the trash heap; obsolete software goes into production tomorrow"? I can't find the quote right now...
  - stretchwithme 16y ago
    ha ha. good one
- nitrogen 16y ago
  DOS would be less surprising to me th an Windows 3.1 or 95, because DOS is still remotely useful in comparison to the latest MS software. It provides simple, direct access to the hardware with no scheduler in the way, so it's probably great for hackjob embedded systems.
thepsi 16y ago
Apparently, everyone's copying Google's layout.
loupgarou21 16y ago
I have a client still running an old NT box because it's the newest computer that can run a $100k+ piece of equipment. The piece of equipment it is attached to is in excellent shape and is still considered state of the art.

22 points by talbina 16y ago

How many point-of-sale systems have you seen that run on Windows 3.1 or old curses-ish UIs? I'm sure it's even more common out of public view: in airport ticket kiosks, warehouse inventory systems, and the like. I saw my share of anachronistic systems working for a Midwestern public library system. Legacy code hell doesn't just apply to codebases.

ugh 16y ago
ATMs!
mahmud 16y ago
LOL @curses; those are Borland BGI and Turbo Graphics, man. To run curses at that time, you needed a 25k Sun Workstation.
- nitrogen 16y ago
  Some of them probably were curses-based, running on a central server feeding a dozen Wyse terminals around the building.

csomar 16y ago

Last year I worked for a company that runs a huge (hundred of thousands of lines) Ms Access 97 software. The migration to Access 2003 needs lot of changes and (worse) they don't have a version control tool, schema of the application, any documentation... The code is a mess and written by bad programmers. So what to do? Start programming for Office 2007 from scratch? This decision took them around 2 years after failing to integrate their access tables with Microsoft SQL (The speed is insanely slow for large corporations).

chime 16y ago
I need to find companies/projects like these. I would have loved to solve this problem in one way or another. a) Rewrite as a web-app in platform of choice. b) Put the entire DB in RAM on a really fast Windows server using SuperVolume. I'm guessing the MDB is less than 16GB in size. Setup Citrix/XenApp on it and deploy MS Access 97 as a standalone Xen application. Users only need to log on to http://citrix.company.com http://citrix.company.com and click the "Access 97" icon. It will launch Access as a local app but it actually runs on the server. You get local disk speeds on the DB with minimal network usage. XenApp licenses are very cheap compared to even new Office licenses, let alone a full rewrite. If users do not need to change the Access 97 code/queries, you can deploy Access runtime instead of the full-access. c) I'm guessing they already tried to move the tables to MS SQL while just linking it from Access 97. If that isn't possible because the code uses tons of Access specific queries, mirror every table to MS SQL periodically, depending on the frequency of updates. Convert the slowest read-only reports to use the data from SQL while data-entry continues to use Access 97 tables. d) Break up the single Access DB into multiple DBs if possible. If Finance and Warehouse modules share almost nothing in common, they don't need to be on the same DB. If the 'employee' table is used to authenticate logins, put that table on MS SQL and link it from both Finance.mdb and Warehouse.mdb. e) Implement a decent ERP system if this application is really core to the company's operation. MS Dynamics NAV would probably be their best bet.
- csomar 16y ago
  Thanks for your insightful comment. Here are my comments on your points. a) They have currently started doing it. b) Companies don't need it. They aren't really bothered with Access 97 and Windows 2000 or XP. All they need is our application. Low OS/Application means low and cheap hardware. c) Tried the simple linking in MS Access, no improvement in speed. We need to re-write all the queries from scratch. Many problems showed and since the code base is huge, rewriting from scratch seemed more feasible and easier. d) The application is huge, it has dozen of DBs e) I don't know what you are talking about, but will do a little research.
  - chime 16y ago

talbina 16y ago

And Windows 3.1 also: http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=%22Windows+3.1%22&l= http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=%22Windows+3.1%22&l= They may have been copying and pasting the same posting for years. And these are the ones who glance over resumes to see who is qualified. That's very disturbing and discouraging.

miles 16y ago

Hey, don't be hatin' on Win9x - it's allegedly got greater market share than the iPad or Blackberry: http://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=10 http://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share....

talbina 16y ago
Does the internet even "work" with Windows 95/98?
- sliverstorm 16y ago
  Totally. 98 was supported by Firefox all the way through version 2, IIRC
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- chaosmachine 16y ago
  Opera 9.5 works on Windows95. Possibly later versions, as well. http://www.opera.com/support/kb/view/886/ http://www.opera.com/support/kb/view/886/
- tbrownaw 16y ago
  I remember it working with 3.1 even, although it wasn't built in (needed something called Trumpet Winsock). '98se had connection sharing (I thought I remembered that '95 did too, but Wikipedia says no... maybe it's that it came with something to install on '95 machines that would let them be clients? I know for a while we had an XP machine with the modem, and a '95 machine that could see the internet through it.), which did for your dial-up much the same thing that your home router does now for your cable/dsl.
- mahmud 16y ago
  Did you not exist 10 years ago? Sheesh. I still get Windows 98 hits in my server logs, mostly zombie boxes running bots.

mediaman 16y ago

Many of the postings for 95 and 3.1 appear to be in the field of health care. Perhaps this is an important message to companies attempting to create rapid innovation in the health sector...

_delirium 16y ago
If it's anything like the way specialist science-lab IT works, I can definitely see that. There's plenty of chemistry labs with ancient OSs on some machines because they have some piece of equipment that doesn't have drivers for anything newer. Basically a disconnect between lifecycles: a good piece of chemistry equipment is supposed to last 20+ years, especially if it's doing something relatively routine and well-understood, whereas software seems not to usually be intended to stick around for 20 years.
- silentbicycle 16y ago
  > Basically a disconnect between lifecycles: a good piece of chemistry equipment is supposed to last 20+ years, especially if it's doing something relatively routine and well-understood, whereas software seems not to usually be intended to stick around for 20 years. This is a good observation, and would probably make a great topic for a much larger discussion/essay.
  - mikecarlucci 16y ago
    Consistency is huge. It's amazing what some of those guys will get out of their equipment. I spent some time talking with a guy who builds data acquisition equipment. Most of his customers started using his sensors in the 80s and until the system either breaks beyond repair or the entire team of scientists has retired, they want to keep the exact same setup. Amazing dedication, but the benefits of testing with the same equipment over many years can lead to some great observations over the long term.
blasdel 16y ago
You don't understand -- this is the result of rapid innovation in the health sector. Stuff takes a long time to come to market!

gnubardt 16y ago

i'd rather work at taco bell

talbina 16y ago
Or Subway, unless you want to live on the toilet.

paulhart 16y ago

I believe some hotel interactive systems (i.e. through the TV) use Windows 95 or 98.

duck 16y ago

This shows the great disconnect between IT and HR at most companies.

TrevorBurnham 16y ago

OK, the support ones make some sense, but I'm baffled by the one that wants experience with Matlab and Windows 95. Who uses Matlab under Windows 95 today? A scientific organization that hasn't been able to buy new hardware for more than a decade?

eru 16y ago
Who says they that they are using Windows 95 and Matlab on the same machine?
ramchip 16y ago
Assuming it's on the same machine: perhaps they have an instrument which runs on Windows 95 and they do some light data processing, or use Matlab to make it interoperate with another device? We've had a similar need in my lab, although it was Windows 2000. We buy new machines alright, but some instruments can't be easily upgraded due to the computer being integrated with it, the drivers being proprietary and specific to the OS, etc.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

NathanKP 16y ago

Windows 95 is still used extensively in embedded programming due to the unparalleled direct hardware access that it provides. When you are developing code for devices that use 8086, or even older FPGA's, you don't need the latest OS. In fact, the newer versions of Windows have more security and device layers which block the operation of the older programs used for uploading code to those older microprocessors. As a result, some of the old chipsets can only be programmed using old software which only works on 95. For a business that does embedded programming it isn't feasible to switch to a new chipset that would require a complete code rewrite just so that they can use a newer OS. Interestingly embedded programming is also an extremely high paying job because there aren't that many people who can do it.

heyjonboy 16y ago
Why wouldn't you just use Linux for embedded systems? Seems wasteful to use a GUI-based OS for something that will most likely be a single-purpose device.
- mahmud 16y ago
  Toolchain and development cycle. Windows 95 systems programming is trivial, and not in a good way. You can access privileged system registers and memory areas directly, until you crash your box. Once you learn how to write a VxD it's a matter of tweaking it for other purposes, since the great difficulty lies in just getting the skeleton to work.
  - nitrogen 16y ago
    Linux is mostly that easy, in my experience. It may be easier, since there are probably already drivers for most of your chips. At any rate, once you have a skeleton kernel mode driver, it's just a matter of tweaking it for other purposes.

stretchwithme 16y ago

I was already to laugh about this when I saw the first ad was for a job in my home town! Actually, it wouldn't surprise me if there are jobs out there that require knowledge of DOS. It seems nothing ever truly dies.

hernan7 16y ago
Was it Joel that said "obsolete hardware goes in the trash heap; obsolete software goes into production tomorrow"? I can't find the quote right now...
- stretchwithme 16y ago
  ha ha. good one
nitrogen 16y ago
DOS would be less surprising to me th an Windows 3.1 or 95, because DOS is still remotely useful in comparison to the latest MS software. It provides simple, direct access to the hardware with no scheduler in the way, so it's probably great for hackjob embedded systems.

thepsi 16y ago

Apparently, everyone's copying Google's layout.

loupgarou21 16y ago

I have a client still running an old NT box because it's the newest computer that can run a $100k+ piece of equipment. The piece of equipment it is attached to is in excellent shape and is still considered state of the art.