In order to have software that lasts, you need environments that last. The classic 1950s Big Iron software, now run swaddled in layer upon layer of emulation o

In order to have software that lasts, you need environments that last. The classic 1950s Big Iron software, now run swaddled in layer upon layer of emulation on current mainframes, is software which lasts because people will recreate its environment again and again, and ignore the people who are ill-served by it because they don't fit into that environment neatly. Oh, your name doesn't fit into an all-caps fixed-width EBCDIC form? Go fold, spindle, and/or mutilate yourself, NEXT! (This happens to me. Over and over again.) On the opposite extreme, unmaintained Internet software rots: https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/tech/InternetSoftwareDecay https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/tech/InternetSoftwa... Or, to be more precise, software is built with assumptions underpinning it, and those assumptions change out from under it more quickly on the Internet than in other contexts. Software can go from being secure and completely above reproach to being a major factor in DDoS amplification or spam runs because the world changed around it. Software that lasts is like ships that last: Replace the hull, the mast, the sails, the cabins... same ship, neh?