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The book "A Deepness in the Sky" features people living on an ship whose operating system is thousands of years old. One of the main characters is considered a

The book "A Deepness in the Sky" features people living on an ship whose operating system is thousands of years old. One of the main characters is considered a software archaeologist of sorts - he's an engineer, but in a sense also a historical researcher. I can't emphasize enough that this notion is only a side point in the story and not a main aspect of the plot, sadly, so I wouldn't go reading it in hopes of hearing more. (Although it is a great book regardless.) I have often considered trying to write a scifi novel centered around this idea because I find it so fascinating.

edfletcher_t137 4y ago
The "software archeologist" idea has lived rent free in my head ever since I read the novel nearly twenty years ago. It's an absolutely fascinating premise, one I can most definitely see being viable to grow into a fully-fledged novel. I would definitely read that.
- jiggawatts 4y ago
  We're half-way there already. I've been telling people that the volume of software written has exploded exponentially, and the real skill anyone in IT has now is not knowing how to use a piece of software on a computer, but simply knowing that a piece of software exists to solve a problem. These days I work largely in a cloud / devops role, and I can't even begin to list everything that I ought to be using but can't because there aren't enough hours in the day to keep up with all of the new developments. That's within a single language, a single web framework, and a single cloud provider! I see projects where architecture astronauts stitch together multiple clouds, multiple languages, and some random junk on-prem that was installed over a decade ago by someone who has passed away since then. Within the expected lifetime of such a system, you'll need a software archaeologist to figure it out!
kragen 4y ago
DRMaciver wrote a novella about it. Programmer at large, it's called. Largely about cultural variation in gender and sex norms. https://www.drmaciver.com/category/programmer-at-large/ https://www.drmaciver.com/category/programmer-at-large/ (down) https://archiveofourown.org/works/9233966/chapters/20941043 https://archiveofourown.org/works/9233966/chapters/20941043
latexr 4y ago
> I can't emphasize enough that this notion is only a side point in the story and not a main aspect of the plot Is it sprinkled throughout the story, or a mostly uninterrupted block of text? As in: is there an easily findable chunk of the book one could read for that idea alone? If so and you could provide a few keywords or a direct quote, I’d be interested in grabbing the book to read that.
- aerovistae 4y ago
  I just went and glanced over the text by searching a pdf for a few key terms - no, it's really just sprinkled. The idea doesn't get much attention and is mostly mentioned in passing.
  - db48x 4y ago
    There is the bit where the story of Pham’s youth is told. He was third son of a King on a medieval–tech world (one with ancient stories of flying machines and long–distance communication devices) when some traders from a distant world landed. To everyone’s surprise they were human, and had expected this world to have a much higher technology level when they arrived. Pham’s dad did some kind of deal where his son Pham was given to the traders as an apprentice; even Pham didn’t know the details. Pham spent the next 20 years or so living on the ship because he refused to use the suspended–animation system (too coffin–like). He learned use use the many layers of emulation to use older and older programs, and eventually learned even trivial details. For example, he learned that the epoch of the time system used by the traders wasn’t actually the date of the first moon landing, but was a couple of years after that. He even hypothesized that over the millennia, many ship’s captains would have installed back doors in the system that might now never be rediscovered (which turns out to be foreshadowing :). One funny detail I remember is a throw–away line where someone rapidly keys in “a column of text”. If you’re paying attention you can combine that with names like Pham, Vinh, Nau, and Qung Ho, the rarity of the red–headed gene, and the descriptions of some traders from the far end of human space you can reconstruct how things went after Humanity reached the stars.
CPLX 4y ago
Interesting to note that you’re basically describing the concept of common law.
- aerovistae 4y ago
  That actually is interesting to note. I hadn't thought of that.
codethief 4y ago
I regularly describe my day job (which consists in reading a 10-year old, arcane & barely readable Spring code base) as me working as a software archeologist. :)

edfletcher_t137 4y ago

The "software archeologist" idea has lived rent free in my head ever since I read the novel nearly twenty years ago. It's an absolutely fascinating premise, one I can most definitely see being viable to grow into a fully-fledged novel. I would definitely read that.

jiggawatts 4y ago
We're half-way there already. I've been telling people that the volume of software written has exploded exponentially, and the real skill anyone in IT has now is not knowing how to use a piece of software on a computer, but simply knowing that a piece of software exists to solve a problem. These days I work largely in a cloud / devops role, and I can't even begin to list everything that I ought to be using but can't because there aren't enough hours in the day to keep up with all of the new developments. That's within a single language, a single web framework, and a single cloud provider! I see projects where architecture astronauts stitch together multiple clouds, multiple languages, and some random junk on-prem that was installed over a decade ago by someone who has passed away since then. Within the expected lifetime of such a system, you'll need a software archaeologist to figure it out!

kragen 4y ago

DRMaciver wrote a novella about it. Programmer at large, it's called. Largely about cultural variation in gender and sex norms. https://www.drmaciver.com/category/programmer-at-large/ https://www.drmaciver.com/category/programmer-at-large/ (down) https://archiveofourown.org/works/9233966/chapters/20941043 https://archiveofourown.org/works/9233966/chapters/20941043

latexr 4y ago

> I can't emphasize enough that this notion is only a side point in the story and not a main aspect of the plot Is it sprinkled throughout the story, or a mostly uninterrupted block of text? As in: is there an easily findable chunk of the book one could read for that idea alone? If so and you could provide a few keywords or a direct quote, I’d be interested in grabbing the book to read that.

aerovistae 4y ago
I just went and glanced over the text by searching a pdf for a few key terms - no, it's really just sprinkled. The idea doesn't get much attention and is mostly mentioned in passing.
- db48x 4y ago
  There is the bit where the story of Pham’s youth is told. He was third son of a King on a medieval–tech world (one with ancient stories of flying machines and long–distance communication devices) when some traders from a distant world landed. To everyone’s surprise they were human, and had expected this world to have a much higher technology level when they arrived. Pham’s dad did some kind of deal where his son Pham was given to the traders as an apprentice; even Pham didn’t know the details. Pham spent the next 20 years or so living on the ship because he refused to use the suspended–animation system (too coffin–like). He learned use use the many layers of emulation to use older and older programs, and eventually learned even trivial details. For example, he learned that the epoch of the time system used by the traders wasn’t actually the date of the first moon landing, but was a couple of years after that. He even hypothesized that over the millennia, many ship’s captains would have installed back doors in the system that might now never be rediscovered (which turns out to be foreshadowing :). One funny detail I remember is a throw–away line where someone rapidly keys in “a column of text”. If you’re paying attention you can combine that with names like Pham, Vinh, Nau, and Qung Ho, the rarity of the red–headed gene, and the descriptions of some traders from the far end of human space you can reconstruct how things went after Humanity reached the stars.

CPLX 4y ago

Interesting to note that you’re basically describing the concept of common law.

aerovistae 4y ago
That actually is interesting to note. I hadn't thought of that.

codethief 4y ago

I regularly describe my day job (which consists in reading a 10-year old, arcane & barely readable Spring code base) as me working as a software archeologist. :)