6 ms·

I’m not the best person to answer this - others should chime in too. I think sadly you won’t be able to read the preeminent examples of really old antifragile

I’m not the best person to answer this - others should chime in too. I think sadly you won’t be able to read the preeminent examples of really old antifragile code that’s still powering the world. That stuff is mostly proprietary - banks and governments and so on. Hence this article. BUT - there are still plenty of mature open source codebases to read, especially operating systems, databases, and Unix utilities. Sure, they’re living projects that now look quite different from the original, but they’re descended from code a few decades old and written in the same language — C. There’s Emacs (35 yrs old), GCC (33 yrs), the Linux kernel (29 yrs), MySQL (25 yrs), and Postgres (a youngster, only 24). And then there’s the programming languages. C itself is now 48 years old! Since it’s the language of the Linux Kernel and Postgres and so much else, I’d be willing to bet it’ll be around for another 48 years. (Yes, I love Rust, and I’d use it over C for any new project, but this is the Linux Kernel folks!) But - since this is Hacker News - I should note that C is beaten by a long long way by Lisp, which is 62 years old. That’s older than COBOL - and people still love it. John McCarthy really had programming figured out.

abhinav22 6y ago
Lisp is amazing. John McCarthy played an amazing role, but there were others too - eg Alonzo Church and the guys that later made Lisp what it is (Common Lisp), with a significant extra set of features including lexical scope. For those who want to learn it - check out this short guide. Highly recommended language!: https://github.com/ashok-khanna/common-lisp-by-example https://github.com/ashok-khanna/common-lisp-by-example
- goatinaboat 6y ago
  Lisp is amazing. John McCarthy played an amazing role But in terms of real world production code it is barely a footnote whereas COBOL fills entire libraries. So while it might be great there just isn’t a lot of examples to look at
  - onei 6y ago
    Lisp as a language might be a footnote, but the ideas the language proposed were revolutionary. Recursion, REPL and even conditionals all came from Lisp (FORTRAN had a conditional entity at the time, but not what we'd recognise as a conditional today and I believe they later adopted Lisp-style conditionals anyway). IIRC, Lisp could be expressed in 5 small base functions defined in assembly, from which the entire language could be defined in turn, making it outrageously portable. It's hard to understate how seminal Lisp was.
    - goatinaboat 6y ago
      It's hard to understate how seminal Lisp was. I don’t disagree but the OP was asking for examples of production code to look at
      - onei 6y ago
        Ah, but you missed my point :) Maybe you aren't seeing Lisp itself in production code (although someone suggested Emacs which is Lisp), but you see it's ideas and influence in almost every language and program you'd find today. There's little bits of Lisp everywhere you look, even if you don't recognise it as Lisp.
        elevader 6y ago
        Which is nice (and very true) but hardly useful when all you want is to look at some actually used lisp code. Emacs might be a good candidate for that.
      - 0x445442 6y ago
        How about this... https://github.com/wting/hackernews https://github.com/wting/hackernews
    - stjohnswarts 6y ago
      I can understand how the ideas are important and revolutionary, but they were then adopted/extended/reused in other languages that seem to have far surpassed lisp in recognition and pragmatic use. Why hasn't lisp reached the heights of usage of something like C++ or Javascript or Java if it's so popular with computer scientists?
fanf2 6y ago
The Postgres project started in 1986. It was renamed to PostgreSQL in 1996, but it’s a lot older than that.
- hyperman1 6y ago
  I heard how postgresql was a kind of addin to postgres, adding sql syntax. Then the non sql parts of postgres atrofied away until the addin more or less swallowed its parent product. A bit like how emacs became an editor and teco was forgotten.
StreamBright 6y ago
I would add Pascal to the mix. It used to rule the world of computing.
- bregma 6y ago
  Pascal was not really used professionally (the original Macintosh toolbox notwithstanding -- Microsoft used C to reimplement it when they developed the Windows API). It was the undergrad teaching language until the recommended curriculum of the ACM replaced it with Java. Neither choice is an excellent technical language for professional use but they're both considered simplistic enough for pedagogy.
  - 0x445442 6y ago
    > Pascal was not really used professionally Delphi was/is used quite a bit professionally.
    - stjohnswarts 6y ago
      Of course but it never reached the levels of c, c++, VB or Java usage.
  - steve_g 6y ago
    I recently learned that the programming language for the Navision ERP system (now Microsoft 365 Business Central) is a Pascal variant called AL.
  - romanoderoma 6y ago
    If we talk about their importance and longevity, Pascal deserves a spot It ran in many places in the 70s and was quite popular at the time of Turbo Pascal. TP compiler was created by Anders Hejlsberg, that later became chief architect of Delphi, that convinced Microsoft to hire him to work as chief architect on C# and now he's a core developer on Typescript.
  - StreamBright 6y ago
    I thought it used to be one of the most popular languages: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqxeLodyyqA&ab_channel=elmustaphabenbihi https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqxeLodyyqA&ab_channel=elmus... Not sure about the source though.
lispm 6y ago
Macsyma and REDUCE are written in Lisp. The development of those two computer algebra programs started in the mid/end 1960s. They are still maintained today. That makes them over 50 years old. Some history on Macsyma: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747717110001483 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S074771711... REDUCE: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.153.8827&rep=rep1&type=pdf http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.153...
- stjohnswarts 6y ago
  I've never actually seen anyone use macsyma? Is it underneath something "more popular" ?
lima 6y ago
The Linux kernel is a great achievement, but I'm not sure if I'd call it resilient or antifragile. The code base is underdocumented, has no automated tests, and full of security issues waiting to be found. The moment you're off the beaten path, you end up debugging random bugs and regressions. Code quality is generally very high, as one would expect, but the code is not necessarily resilient or well-designed. SQLite is a much better example of truly antifragile code.
- user5994461 6y ago
  The kernel is the opposite of a long running system. Developers are working on the master branch that is never run or deployed. Every 5 years or so, linux distributions will pick up the latest kernel version and ship it. To upgrade you have to reformat and reinstall your computer, there's no continuity of service, there's no upgrade path.
  - bregma 6y ago
    This does not match my lived experience over the last 25 years. I would argue from that that you are incorrect.
  - ptx 6y ago
    What? To upgrade Debian (the archetypical stable distro) to a new release, you just do an "apt dist-upgrade": https://wiki.debian.org/DebianUpgrade https://wiki.debian.org/DebianUpgrade Minor patches to the Debian kernel are released all the time and you get those with a regular "apt upgrade". With Arch and other rolling-release distros, you get major new kernel versions all the time as part of the normal package upgrade flow.
  - stjohnswarts 6y ago
    >>Every 5 years or so, linux distributions will pick up the latest kernel version and ship it. To upgrade you have to reformat and reinstall your computer, there's no continuity of service, there's no upgrade path. What in the world are you talking about? Distros are constantly pulling versions of Linux kernel from "master" tweaking it a little bit for their system and shipping it. Most at least a few times a year.
moonbug 6y ago
Fortran is 63. so get off our lawn, kids.
totemandtoken 6y ago
It's sad that so much well-written code is proprietary. I'm currently doing a masters in CS as a career change from mechanical engineering and what surprises me is how little time we spend learning to read code. It would be nice to have a Great Works type program for code bases
peter303 6y ago
LISP and its variants was the introductory programming language at MIT from the 1970s to the 2000s. Partly because they had the LISP/A.I. royalty on their faculty in this era. Students complained they wanted something more modern to get a better internship. They was silly because the majority of students entered MIT having already learned the latest fad language during high school.

abhinav22 6y ago

Lisp is amazing. John McCarthy played an amazing role, but there were others too - eg Alonzo Church and the guys that later made Lisp what it is (Common Lisp), with a significant extra set of features including lexical scope. For those who want to learn it - check out this short guide. Highly recommended language!: https://github.com/ashok-khanna/common-lisp-by-example https://github.com/ashok-khanna/common-lisp-by-example

goatinaboat 6y ago
Lisp is amazing. John McCarthy played an amazing role But in terms of real world production code it is barely a footnote whereas COBOL fills entire libraries. So while it might be great there just isn’t a lot of examples to look at
- onei 6y ago
  Lisp as a language might be a footnote, but the ideas the language proposed were revolutionary. Recursion, REPL and even conditionals all came from Lisp (FORTRAN had a conditional entity at the time, but not what we'd recognise as a conditional today and I believe they later adopted Lisp-style conditionals anyway). IIRC, Lisp could be expressed in 5 small base functions defined in assembly, from which the entire language could be defined in turn, making it outrageously portable. It's hard to understate how seminal Lisp was.
  - goatinaboat 6y ago
    It's hard to understate how seminal Lisp was. I don’t disagree but the OP was asking for examples of production code to look at
    - onei 6y ago
      Ah, but you missed my point :) Maybe you aren't seeing Lisp itself in production code (although someone suggested Emacs which is Lisp), but you see it's ideas and influence in almost every language and program you'd find today. There's little bits of Lisp everywhere you look, even if you don't recognise it as Lisp.
      - elevader 6y ago
        Which is nice (and very true) but hardly useful when all you want is to look at some actually used lisp code. Emacs might be a good candidate for that.
    - 0x445442 6y ago
      How about this... https://github.com/wting/hackernews https://github.com/wting/hackernews
  - stjohnswarts 6y ago
    I can understand how the ideas are important and revolutionary, but they were then adopted/extended/reused in other languages that seem to have far surpassed lisp in recognition and pragmatic use. Why hasn't lisp reached the heights of usage of something like C++ or Javascript or Java if it's so popular with computer scientists?

fanf2 6y ago

The Postgres project started in 1986. It was renamed to PostgreSQL in 1996, but it’s a lot older than that.

hyperman1 6y ago
I heard how postgresql was a kind of addin to postgres, adding sql syntax. Then the non sql parts of postgres atrofied away until the addin more or less swallowed its parent product. A bit like how emacs became an editor and teco was forgotten.

StreamBright 6y ago

I would add Pascal to the mix. It used to rule the world of computing.

bregma 6y ago
Pascal was not really used professionally (the original Macintosh toolbox notwithstanding -- Microsoft used C to reimplement it when they developed the Windows API). It was the undergrad teaching language until the recommended curriculum of the ACM replaced it with Java. Neither choice is an excellent technical language for professional use but they're both considered simplistic enough for pedagogy.
- 0x445442 6y ago
  > Pascal was not really used professionally Delphi was/is used quite a bit professionally.
  - stjohnswarts 6y ago
    Of course but it never reached the levels of c, c++, VB or Java usage.
- steve_g 6y ago
  I recently learned that the programming language for the Navision ERP system (now Microsoft 365 Business Central) is a Pascal variant called AL.
- romanoderoma 6y ago
  If we talk about their importance and longevity, Pascal deserves a spot It ran in many places in the 70s and was quite popular at the time of Turbo Pascal. TP compiler was created by Anders Hejlsberg, that later became chief architect of Delphi, that convinced Microsoft to hire him to work as chief architect on C# and now he's a core developer on Typescript.
- StreamBright 6y ago
  I thought it used to be one of the most popular languages: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqxeLodyyqA&ab_channel=elmustaphabenbihi https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqxeLodyyqA&ab_channel=elmus... Not sure about the source though.

lispm 6y ago

Macsyma and REDUCE are written in Lisp. The development of those two computer algebra programs started in the mid/end 1960s. They are still maintained today. That makes them over 50 years old. Some history on Macsyma: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747717110001483 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S074771711... REDUCE: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.153.8827&rep=rep1&type=pdf http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.153...

stjohnswarts 6y ago
I've never actually seen anyone use macsyma? Is it underneath something "more popular" ?

lima 6y ago

The Linux kernel is a great achievement, but I'm not sure if I'd call it resilient or antifragile. The code base is underdocumented, has no automated tests, and full of security issues waiting to be found. The moment you're off the beaten path, you end up debugging random bugs and regressions. Code quality is generally very high, as one would expect, but the code is not necessarily resilient or well-designed. SQLite is a much better example of truly antifragile code.

user5994461 6y ago
The kernel is the opposite of a long running system. Developers are working on the master branch that is never run or deployed. Every 5 years or so, linux distributions will pick up the latest kernel version and ship it. To upgrade you have to reformat and reinstall your computer, there's no continuity of service, there's no upgrade path.
- bregma 6y ago
  This does not match my lived experience over the last 25 years. I would argue from that that you are incorrect.
- ptx 6y ago
  What? To upgrade Debian (the archetypical stable distro) to a new release, you just do an "apt dist-upgrade": https://wiki.debian.org/DebianUpgrade https://wiki.debian.org/DebianUpgrade Minor patches to the Debian kernel are released all the time and you get those with a regular "apt upgrade". With Arch and other rolling-release distros, you get major new kernel versions all the time as part of the normal package upgrade flow.
- stjohnswarts 6y ago
  >>Every 5 years or so, linux distributions will pick up the latest kernel version and ship it. To upgrade you have to reformat and reinstall your computer, there's no continuity of service, there's no upgrade path. What in the world are you talking about? Distros are constantly pulling versions of Linux kernel from "master" tweaking it a little bit for their system and shipping it. Most at least a few times a year.

moonbug 6y ago

Fortran is 63. so get off our lawn, kids.

totemandtoken 6y ago

It's sad that so much well-written code is proprietary. I'm currently doing a masters in CS as a career change from mechanical engineering and what surprises me is how little time we spend learning to read code. It would be nice to have a Great Works type program for code bases

peter303 6y ago

LISP and its variants was the introductory programming language at MIT from the 1970s to the 2000s. Partly because they had the LISP/A.I. royalty on their faculty in this era. Students complained they wanted something more modern to get a better internship. They was silly because the majority of students entered MIT having already learned the latest fad language during high school.