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> ...Management didn't want to give us budget to rewrite it in a modern language, sadly. I fully agree with the management. The problem with software developer

> ...Management didn't want to give us budget to rewrite it in a modern language, sadly. I fully agree with the management. The problem with software developers of today is that instead of being engineers and getting shit done they are more like script kiddies trying to do cool 1337 things. There are some golden rules in engineering: never touch a running system, if ain't broke, don't fix it and don't reinvent the wheel - just use it.

lloydatkinson 7y ago
Oh god shut up already
tombert 7y ago
I don't think I agree with that at all. There aren't security updates, older hardware becomes harder and harder to get fixed. It's easy to say "if it ain't broke, don't fix it", but in effect everything is breaking all the time. Hard drives fail, processors burn out, security holes are discovered, and the more out-of-date something is, the harder it is to replace or fix. If there were periodic attempts to modernize stuff, the blow of this is less severe. Example, I'm sure the people running the Target POS devices five years ago had the mentality "if it ain't broke, don't fix it", and it led to a huge breach.
- badsectoracula 7y ago
  > There aren't security updates From the story i get that this doesn't matter as it is a single isolated DOS program they run inside a VM. > older hardware becomes harder and harder to get fixed I'm sure you'll be able to find billions of computers that can run OS/2 in a VM both now and in the future.
  - tombert 7y ago
    > I'm sure you'll be able to find billions of computers that can run OS/2 in a VM both now and in the future. Fair enough, I probably could have gotten it working in DOSBox at some point as well, further increasing the compatible devices, but that still doesn't deter from the fact that no one really knows Foxpro anymore. It's hard to fix bugs in dead languages.
    - badsectoracula 7y ago
      AFAIK FoxPro is part of the xBase family of database systems and while these aren't as popular as they used to be, there is still a lot of information about them out there (and they were meant to be easy to learn and use). There are even some open source implementations (Harbour). So it shouldn't be that hard to fix things, at least for a good programmer. The hard part would be convincing said programmer to work on it :-P.

lloydatkinson 7y ago

Oh god shut up already

tombert 7y ago

I don't think I agree with that at all. There aren't security updates, older hardware becomes harder and harder to get fixed. It's easy to say "if it ain't broke, don't fix it", but in effect everything is breaking all the time. Hard drives fail, processors burn out, security holes are discovered, and the more out-of-date something is, the harder it is to replace or fix. If there were periodic attempts to modernize stuff, the blow of this is less severe. Example, I'm sure the people running the Target POS devices five years ago had the mentality "if it ain't broke, don't fix it", and it led to a huge breach.

badsectoracula 7y ago
> There aren't security updates From the story i get that this doesn't matter as it is a single isolated DOS program they run inside a VM. > older hardware becomes harder and harder to get fixed I'm sure you'll be able to find billions of computers that can run OS/2 in a VM both now and in the future.
- tombert 7y ago
  > I'm sure you'll be able to find billions of computers that can run OS/2 in a VM both now and in the future. Fair enough, I probably could have gotten it working in DOSBox at some point as well, further increasing the compatible devices, but that still doesn't deter from the fact that no one really knows Foxpro anymore. It's hard to fix bugs in dead languages.
  - badsectoracula 7y ago
    AFAIK FoxPro is part of the xBase family of database systems and while these aren't as popular as they used to be, there is still a lot of information about them out there (and they were meant to be easy to learn and use). There are even some open source implementations (Harbour). So it shouldn't be that hard to fix things, at least for a good programmer. The hard part would be convincing said programmer to work on it :-P.