4 ms·

Regarding your point about ancient systems having higher quality, maybe there has been a selection effect? The systems that were crap might have been rewritten

• Pamar 6y ago
  Or more probably the company using them folded...
• user5994461 6y ago
  There's a very strong drive for quality. When you handle payments or trading systems, having 1% of transaction disappearing doesn't cut it. It's the environment around critical systems. When shit hits the fan, it's really bad and there's a feedback loop to developers/managers/companies. Software is ironed out over time. Bugs are removed and things are very stable in finance. Software that really doesn't work (and can't be fixed) might be killed or never see the light of day. The result of failure is too bad and too visible. It's way more than that. There's all sort of strange incentives. Like you don't get dinged for fixing a bug instead of making a new features (frequently there's no new features to make, it's largely maintenance work).
• Spivak 6y ago
  Of course but that’s kinda the point. If you have a 20 year old system still kicking odds are good that it lasted because it’s quality. If it wasn’t it would have been replaced ages ago.