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I'm honestly curious what will happen to these systems in 20 more years when most of the skilled knowledge retires and the resources, documentation, and toolcha
by lumost 6y ago
I'm honestly curious what will happen to these systems in 20 more years when most of the skilled knowledge retires and the resources, documentation, and toolchain maintenance goes with it. Industrial automation from years past moved to hardware emulation to keep the binaries running on ancient oil refineries that would be wholesale replaced at some point.
The systems described in the article store real data that would need to be migrated, which may be locked in uninterpretable binary formats read using binaries which can't be run on modern hardware.
- Swizec 6y agoI had a friend in college who got to maintain a piece of banking software. There was no source code, no documentation, and no team to contact. A running binary was all he had to work with. After so much maintenance and improvement had been done on the compiled binary, the source code wouldn’t help even if you had it. Lots of fun stories.
- spartacusnacho 6y agoHow the hell do you even begin without source code? Run a decompiler on the binary?
- ed25519FUUU 6y agoExactly what I’m thinking. What is there even to maintain other than restart it when it fails?
- giomasce 6y agoMachine code is code like any other code. Sure, often not easy to read or modify, but not impossible. I'd start with a disassembler, a debugger, possibly a decompiler and lots of patience. Given appropriate time and pay I might even consider it a fun job.
- spartacusnacho 6y agoWould a disassembler be more reliable than a decompiler you think? That could be a whole lot of code you'd be looking at in assembly language.
- giomasce 6y agoI suppose it depends on the code you're trying to understand. Depending on its size, style (therefore, ability for a human or for a decompiler to understand it) and other factors, the best blend of tools can change.