4 ms·

Along these lines I was curious what the oldest running program is. Found [0]. In use since 1959(ish). [0] https://www.technologyreview.com/2015/08/06/166822/w

• abrax3141 5y ago
  A (literally!) orthogonal question: What's the most knocked-off program -- that is, has the widest family tree. My off-the-top-of-my-head (OTToMH?) guess would be ELIZA.
  • eatonphil 5y ago
    Not "print 'Hello World!'"?
    • abrax3141 5y ago
      Hmmm. I'm not sure that Hello World actually counts as a program. It's usually just a code snippet. And anyway, it was created (coined?) way after ELIZA.
  • kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
    Xmodem
• geoffeg 5y ago
  Sometimes I think it would have been cool to have gotten into supporting something really obscure like that at an early stage in my career. A near-guaranteed contract renewal as long as the system wasn't replaced. If it was to be replaced, you'd likely have a good amount of warning. You'd be one of a very small handful of people in the world able to support and maintain the system. You could become a deeply knowledgeable expert about the system over dozens of years likely without having to learn a new language, framework or system more than a few times in your career. Of course, the downsides are huge, especially if you limited yourself to that one system. If the contract didn't renew, finding a new job would likely be incredibly difficult. I could see it getting mind-numbingly boring, I guess that might be a plus for some people, but would likely drive me crazy.